The Madisons Receive an Invitation

Note: The following is a companion piece to the entry immediately below it. --KFB.

"What did you say your name was?" Dolley Madison asked.

I hadn't. "Um, Karen," I said.

Dolley and her husband, James, rose from their respective chairs in the formal sitting room. Three of their servants stood nearby, along with what would in another era be called Secret Service men. The house they now occupied was not the White House, which was currently under reconstruction after the fire, and in any case had not yet been so named. Nevertheless, James Madison was the current President of the United States, and my presence here was a calculated risk. If my next words were not sufficiently persuasive, I would be ejected from their home, at best, and arrested at worst. "And you have come to invite us to a picnic?" Dolley continued.

"Not you, exclusively," I told her. "I am inviting both of you, President and Mrs. John and Abigail Adams and possibly Mr. Samuel Adams, and President Jefferson. President Jefferson has already agreed to come, and awaits us in my conveyance outside."

"President Jefferson agreed to this?" President Madison asked. "Why?"

I smiled. "I suspect that he felt he had no choice in the matter."

"No choice? Is this an abduction, then?" Dolley asked.

"By no means," I assured her. "I have no weapons to force compliance. What I do have is a promise, and the ability to keep it. If you come with me, you will see the United States as it is nearly two centuries hence, in all its might, all its ideals and all its arrogance and other flaws. Is that not worth six hours of your time?"

"This is madness," the President said. "No one can see truly into the future, by divination or any other means."

"One can see it if one is actually there," I said. I reached into my pocket for my PDA, provoking wary reactions from the presumed bodyguards. "One can also see it in recordings of such times," I continued, "but they are less informative. If you would care to look at the device in my hand, you will catch a glimpse in moving pictures of the era I have offered to show you in person."

After a moment's hesitation, Dolley stepped forward, followed more reluctantly by her husband. I started the playback on a thirty second video clip of Independence Day festivities in New York City. "The images are a little small and grainy," I apologized, "but you get the general idea."

"Who is the woman depicted in that large green statue?" Dolley asked.

"Liberty," I told her. "She is meant to welcome people to this country, although we don't always live up to that promise."

"Is liberty still treasured?" James Madison asked.

"Everyone gives it lip service, at least," I said. "Your Bill of Rights helps us to fight any infringements."

Dolly looked questioningly at her husband, who nodded slowly. "We shall come," he said

Holiday Picnic with Tom and Abby and Friends

pictures from www.whitehouse.gov--mostly!

I'm back in time travel mode this holiday weekend, and it's John M Scalzi's fault. His assignment on By the Way... is to write about which of the Founding Fathers we'd like to hang out with. Well, you can't do that without time travel right? You could maybe pull it off with seances or past life regression, but I find those concepts a little far-fetched, don't you?

So let's pile into the TARDIS and go pick up the guests for our little time travelers' picnic:

1. Thomas Jefferson. With all due respect to Washington and Franklin, this guy is the most interesting of the 1776 history makers. As Time magazine pointed out this week (and I'm sure it's not a new insight), he was a a mass of contradictions: a slaveholder and proponent of equality, a shy politician, an advocate of minimalist government who doubled the size of the country in one of the biggest and best land deals ever, scientist and philosopher (in those days not a contradiction), and an advocate of a free press who wanted his newspaper detractors tried for sedition. Yes, I'd like a good, long conversation with him, on any number of subjects. I wonder whether his contradictory life made sense to Jefferson himself.

2. Dolley Madison. Yes, I know that there are snack cakes named after her, which used to be advertised during A Charlie Brown Christmas. That is not the point. She was the unofficial First Lady during Jefferson's presidency, playing hostess because Mrs. Jefferson was dead by then. Later on, in 1814, she reputedly saved a portrait of George Washington from the invading British, who nearly managed to burn the President's House (White House) to the ground. Brave lady. She also was a real First Lady when James Madison was President. My friend Sara tells me that James Madison was a major force behind the Bill of Rights (see her comment below), which makes him my kind of guy. So he's invited, too.

3. The Adams Family. No, I don't mean Gomez and Morticia; anyway their surname is spelled differently. I mean John Adams, his wife Abigail Adams, and his radical cousin Samuel Adams. Back in eighth grade I read a biography of Paul Revere, written by someone who had previously done a biography of the firebrand Boston patriot who later got a beer named after him. This book did cover silversmith Revere's life, but in the background it was always Sam Adams this and Samuel Adams that. I suspect he was too fanatical for me to ever be comfortable around Samuel Adams, but I'd still like to talk to him, once, with other people around so I don't get stuck in a long political harangue with him. Abigail, the famous letter writer, kept things going at home while husband John as off at the Continental Congress. If any woman can be called a Founding Mother, she's at or near the top of the list. And poor John Adams (who according to the 1776 lyrics was "obnoxious and disliked") needs to be there to mediate between all these other people, with most of whom he had strong connections at one point or another.

I thought about inviting Alexander Hamilton, too, but I don't want any duels or fistfights to break out. My heart's not really with the Federalists, for the most part. You will notice that George W. is not on the guest list.

Now that we've got everyone on board, let's head for our first stop:

Manlius, NY, Memorial Day 1970. That's the day when the high school band, the scouts, the volunteer fire department, WW I vets and others parade down Fayette Street, cheered on by people with flags and pinwheels and ice cream from Sno Top. Maybe afterward we can play a little badminton in the Funk family back yard before getting back in the TARDIS and proceeding to

Molina Basin, Hitchcock or Rose Canyon picnic area, Mount Lemmon, AZ, 2004. This is a chance for our guests to see a part of the country they barely knew existed (and that wasn't part of America's holdings) circa 1800. There are fire restrictions in Arizona until the monsoon arrives, so we'll just bring sandwiches, salads, Eegee's fruit slushes and diet soda and Popeye's chicken. What's more traditional on the 4th of July than a picnic?

I just hope Tom and his friends like at least some of what we've done with the place since 1776.

Karen

See also:
The Madisons Receive an Invitation

What Would Jefferson Do? Does it Matter?

Tags: Weekend Assignment, Time Travel, Thomas Jefferson

Shopping by TARDIS

This is a painting by bandleader Xavier Cugat, title unknown. Based on the colors, and the fact that one of the doctors is holding a copy of Playboy, I'm guessing it dates from circa 1960. We bought it at a thrift shop several years ago for $27.50, at the height of our yard sale and eBay period.

It hangs in a room full of furniture and decor of roughly the same vintage, midcentury modern vinyl couches and strange lamps and a fake tv minibar. A vintage bowl holds somebody's collection of old matchbooks. One of our many Tiki mugs, a glass one, holds our vintage swizzle sticks. Were it not for the fact that the room has since been overloaded with junk from my mom's estate, you could almost believe it's 1960 in that room.

We bought our vintage furniture, decor and toys on the cheap, at yard sales and estate sales, in thrift shops and at auction. Many of the pieces were inexpensive because of condition: torn fabric, mostly. Even the Cugat has a tear in the canvas.

There's a better way to get this stuff, if only we had the right equipment. You see, when I wrote about vacationing by time machine a couple of weeks ago, I left out a very important part of the itinerary.

I want to go shopping in the 1960s. So does John.

What I actually want is to shop in January and July of each year from 1955 to 1969. John and I would make our purchases at Sears and J.C. Penney, Weber's Department Store in Manlius NY, Economy Books and Ed Guth Hobbies in Syracuse, and at the Art Corner at Disneyland. We'd buy comics and original cells and Micki Mouse Club Magazine issues with Annette and Zorro and Spin & Marty on the covers. We'd buy Miller clocks and Eames chairs. I'd get two of each Barbie, Midge, et al. issued from 1958 through 1969. John would complete his collection of Warriors of the World figures. I'd get a Jane West, and all the bone china animals I had until Ethel and I gradually broke most of them.

We'd get mint condition crayons with all the original, politically incorrect color names, in both the 128 crayon box and the 64 crayon box with the built-in sharpener. We'd get the original Enterprise model with the light-up nacelles, and a complete set of Tinykins, and Steiff plush. Then we'd have to get a bigger house to display it all.

The closest we've come lately to shopping in the 1960s has been when we've visited our local Ace Hardware. This particular store has been around for decades, and carries much of the same stuff I used to see at local hardware stores before there was such a thing as Home Depot. They have jadite bowls and metal signs, model cars and trains, and zillions of other items, some of them quite nifty. A couple of years ago, we bought a white Christmas tree there.

The other great retro place here in Tucson is Yikes! Toy Store, which sells repro tin toys and Hula lamps and Freud action figures and other amazing things.

But I still want to go shopping at 1957 Disneyland, and Weber's, and Sears, and buy all those things we once had or never got but wanted, all shiny and new at pre-inflation prices.

And then, I suppose, we would sell the extra Barbies at 21st century prices, to finance our next stop: shopping in the future.

Karen

Temporal Mystery Tour

Photo by John Blocher, February 2004.

AOL journals guru John M Scalzi has posted a challenge for journalers to write vacation recommendations for places they've never been. Well, sure, there are lots of places I want to see in my lifetime and haven't: the Pacific Northwest, the Dakotas, Alaska, Greece, Israel, Kenya, Australia, New Zealand, Tonga - well, all of them, really. Everywhere I haven't been is where I'd like to go, as long as people there aren't shooting at each other or dying of diseases and malnutrition while I watch helplessly. But my real dream vacation isn't to any of those places. I want to travel in four dimensions, at least, not just three.

Even before I ever heard of the TARDIS, I wanted to travel in time. Over the years I've picked out several destinations:

* New York City, circa 1960. Peggy Cass and James Thurber himself appeared in A Thurber Carnival, a revue later directed by my mom in Syracuse. I’d like to have seen Thurber play himself in “File and Forget,” but the man died when I was four years old. While I was in town, I’d pop forward a year or two and chat up Stan Lee before buying a dozen copies of Amazing Fantasy #15.

* Liverpool and Hamburg, 1955-62. My husband tells me that audio tape does exist of the Quarry Men performance at the Wooton Parish Garden Fete, after which John Lennon met Paul McCartney for the first time. That’s pretty miraculous, but it’s not good enough for me. I want to take 21st century recording equipment down there, and tape Paul as he plays 20 Flight Rock for John. I want to record Rory Storm & the Hurricanes, the Silver Beatles, and the Nurk Twins. I want to hang out at a Cavern Club lunchtime session, and shop at NEMS. Then I’ll come home and turn all those recordings over to Apple—but keep a copy for myself, of course! Maybe I can get a research grant from some Time Travel Institute’s musicology department.

* Jerusalem, circa 28 AD. Can I have a Universal Translator for this one? I’m not big on Aramaic, and I don’t want to push for any miracles for my personal convenience.

* Anywhere, 23rd century. I’d like to see who came closest to getting it right: Roddenberry, JMS, or the BBC.

Maybe after that, I can upgrade my TARDIS or other time travel device to go sideways in time, from one reality to another. Then I can visit the real Enterprise (NCC-1701), Sam Beckett, Mary Poppins, the Wart, Eeyore, Bilbo Baggins and Meg Murry. I’d finish off that trip with two weeks in Mâvarin, looking around in the world of my creation, talking to people I know well but have never met.

Karen