Category: History

2021 Year in Review

“Happy New Year 2021” by Shahid Abdullah is licensed under CC PDM 1.0

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In some respects 2021 was a great improvement over 2020. People were rarely locked at home. Travel resumed. Vaccines and toilet paper were plentiful. In other ways, however, 2021 was disappointingly similar to 2020. Fights broke out in public places over sundry items. The Rockettes again cancelled their Christmas spectacular. One man was sentenced to 10 years in prison in Iowa for beating up and coughing on someone who asked him to pull up his mask.

In celebration of New Year’s Eve, let us review some of Brown’s Close’s highlights from 2021:

January: While there was an obvious riot in the Capitol, there were a few other, much neglected, events. Kim Kardashian and Kanye West broke up; Bernie Sanders wore mittens; and Anne Hathaway demanded everyone start calling her Annie.

February: The Kansas City Chiefs failed to score even one touchdown in the Super Bowl, devastating my coworkers in Kansas City. Also on Super Bowl Sunday, I participated in Alaska Ski for Women dressed as an apple.

March: While murder hornets plagued the world in 2020, a swarm of locusts pestered the citizens of Kenya in 2021. In other, chillier places, I finished near the bottom (but not last!) in the Tour of Anchorage ski race.

April: A blockage in the Suez Canal halted international commerce for six days. This made me wonder, when was the last time the Suez Canal was in the news — 1956?

May: In the normal course of my shopping, a retail store worker informed me Donald Trump was still the president. Her proof was a cell phone video of him walking out to “Hail to the Chief.” The video was presumably filmed in 2018.

June: Twitter was banned by the entire nation of Nigeria.

July: Simone Biles backed out of the Olympics due to a case of the “twisties.”

August: I took my dad to see “The Guess Who” at the Alaska State Fair. The entire week leading up to this event, I kept telling people we were going to see “The No Doubt,” and/or “The Good News.” At the concert, a pair of 60-year-old women seated in the wet section stormed the stage and sat on the edge of it for the remainder of the concert. The lead singer gamely came over and sat with them for a few songs.

September: The QAnon Shaman plead guilty to entering a restricted building. Not only known as the “QAnon Shaman,” I discovered he sometimes goes by “The Yellowstone Wolf.” He’s also the accomplished author of two self-published books.

October: Scared straight by news stories that Christmas would be cancelled by the supply chain crisis, I began my Christmas shopping.

November: I concluded my Christmas shopping, just in time for all gifts already purchased to go on sale for Black Friday.

December: One of my friends is from Minerva, Ohio. In lieu of a traditional Christmas movie, we sat down to watch famed Bigfoot documentary, “Minerva Monster.” The film, with an audience score of 40% on Rotten Tomatoes, does not have a critics rating.

Minerva, Ohio, is, apparently, one of the most prominent sites for spotting Bigfoot. In 1978, Bigfoot terrorized the home of the Claytons over the period of several months. The Claytons claimed they mistook Bigfoot for a large hairy man who weighed over five hundred pounds.

It’s unclear whether they know an actual person who fits this description. Nevertheless, the residents of Minerva were somewhat unconcerned with ensuring they proved Bigfoot’s existence. For example, one of the Claytons did claim he had photos of Bigfoot bites on his brother’s neck. He did not think to produce these for the documentary. Also, while the residents went through the trouble of collecting a sample of Bigfoot’s fur and sending it to Malone College for analysis, when the sample went mysteriously missing they took no steps to retrieve it.

Just as the Claytons quietly accepted their Bigfoot DNA analysis was going awry, I am dutifully plodding into the new year expecting the chaos of the last two years to continue. However, let us be optimistic. From this mighty army of one at Brown’s Close, Happy New Year, and may we all have a more peaceful 2022.

Sarah Brown had an action-packed year. Before she gets too busy in 2022, tweet her @BrownsClose1 or email her at sarah@browns-close.com. “Close” is a British term for an alley or cul-de-sac.

Squatting in Graveyards

“Ervik Graveyard Midnight” by Fairy Heart ♥ is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

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In honor of Halloween, this column will be dedicated to my dad, and his most favorite hobby of all time – standing in graveyards looking at headstones.

Like many Americans, my dad is interested in genealogy. His storied family ancestry dates back to Oliver Cromwell, the Mayflower, and the Revolutionary War. Dad has dutifully led his family though many historic sites, tracing the gallant, brave acts by Browns long since lost.   I’ve personally stood in graveyards across multiple state lines with my dad, looking for the graves of dearly departed family members. The older the grave, the more difficult this is, as years of graveyard wear and tear rub away the names.

Most recently, my dad discovered he was a descendent of John Pemberton, the leader of the famed “Overmountain Men.” This ragtag group from 1700’s era East Tennessee heard tell that the British had threatened to burn all of their farms to the ground. The Overmountain Men understandably objected to this, and charged out of the hills of Tennessee and down into North Carolina. The British soldiers, confronted by a hundred crazed and imposing backwoodsmen, freaked out and met with a shameful defeat at the Battle of King’s Mountain.

In order to pay homage to the group’s bravery, my dad wanted to trace the journey of the Overmountain Men by car. While it would take us a matter of hours, we would follow the route that the men marched along for two painful weeks, from John Pemberton’s farm through the Great Smokey Mountains, and down into North Carolina.

John Pemberton, a wealthy farmer, mustered his brawny troops under the Pemberton Oak near his house. This was the first stop on our local tour. Down narrow dirt roads near Bristol, Tennessee, my dad and I drove hither and yon, looking for an oak. The challenging part was that the oak tree had fallen over in 2002, so we were reduced to looking for a sign, which was much less impressive.

We missed the sign for the other trees, and in frustration moved on to our next site, John Pemberton’s grave.

The grave was in a small cemetery on private property near a tool store. Dad thought it best we scout out the place in advance of trespassing, and make sure we could distinguish which dirt road to which farm behind which tool store.

And my dad has always believed if something is worth doing, then it is worth doing well. In every store, in every gas station, in every restaurant, he asked the employees, “Have you heard of John Pemberton? Have you heard of the Overmountain Men?”

Most of these employees were somewhat sullen teenagers begrudgingly working summer jobs. To say they were wholly unconcerned with John Pemberton and the Overmountain Men would be an understatement.

“Who? No, never heard of him.”

“What? Who’s that?”

“Huh? Like Pemberton Road? That’s right there.”

“Nope. Well, that’s something right there.”

There was, however, one elderly man who owned a gift shop that sold only religious iconography and soapstone animals.

“Ah yeah. That’s behind that tool store. Park, walk up the hill, through the fence, past the farm house, and it’s on your right. Nobody ever goes there.”

 We thanked him for the clear instructions, and my dad bristled at Bristol’s lack of reverence for our Revolutionary family members.

We found the tool store in a manner of minutes, and parked in the gravel lot. The building was inauspicious, and the store closed.

We walked around the store through a grassy field, and up a hill. We found a fence, clearly marked “Private Property, Do Not Enter,” and entered.

Up around a farm house, where we were greeted aggressively by a handful of chained dogs, through a second fence, and into a small graveyard.

It was quiet and shaded, with a myriad of faded headstones. Dad and I then began the slow work of looking at each headstone, and attempting to locate the name of the deceased. Most graves were too old, and any inscription had long since worn away. Some, however, were fresh and legible from as recently as the 1960s.

I was just pondering what Dad and I would have to do to qualify to be buried at such a historic site, when I heard the delighted cry of, “Found it!”

I picked my way through some overgrowth to a small stone marking John Pemberton’s remains, next to those of Mrs. Pemberton. We stared reverently for a few moments, and then bolted the fence, said goodbye to the dogs, walked back to the rental car, and began the lengthy drive to North Carolina.

Sarah Brown can be found squatting near graves. If you’re too chicken to join her, Tweet her on Twitter @BrownsClose1, or email her at sarah@browns-close.com. “Close” is a British term for alley or cul-de-sac.

Canceling Summer

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As we look forward to what promises to be an unusual back-to-school season, we can reflect on what was certainly a unique summer. 2020 proved the summer of canceling, and on both sides of the political aisle. In May, Mat-Su School District attempted (unsuccessfully) to cancel The Great Gatsby, I know Why the Caged Bird Sings, The Things They Carried, Invisible Man, and Catch-22. Since then, progressives have taken up the canceling mantle; they attempted (successfully) to cancel Woodrow Wilson, Cops, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Teddy Roosevelt, Kriner’s Diner, and, for a hot minute, Gone with the Wind. Hamilton and Mount Rushmore still await their fates.

For the free speech advocates out there, cancel culture is a threat. For those of us harboring dictatorial tendencies, however, it’s an opportunity. I hereby participate in cancel culture, seize complete power, and you all can consider the following books, movies, and other entities officially banned:

  1. Iron Man, sometimes known as Tony Stark: He’s too beloved. I cancel him first as a show of my power.
  2. Les Misérables: Thanks to Broadway and Hollywood, this story is well-known. Those of you who did not read the unabridged version in 10th grade English, however, missed all of the real misery found in “The Miserable Ones.”

The novel is overly long – nearly 1,500 pages. A significant portion of these pages bear no resemblance to a plot. For example, there is a 100-page tangent describing the Battle of Waterloo in detail. The battle takes place well before any incident in the story and has absolutely no impact on subsequent events. There is yet another 100-page tangent on the history of the Parisian sewers. The first 100 pages of the novel take a deep dive into the background of a character who appears early in the book and is never seen again. Finally, central, beloved character, Fantine, croaks on page 200, making it through just over 10 percent of the page count; realistically, Fantine has an outsized influence on pop culture, considering just how little of the story she endures.

To this day, I resent the fact that we read this particular opus, as opposed to say, a different Victor Hugo vehicle. If we really must, why couldn’t we read The Hunchback of Notre Dame, at a tightly paced 900 pages?  And why, oh why, did we have to read such a massive, meandering, French novel in a class entitled, “English Literature?”

  1. Martin Van Buren: As a gal who prefers more of a clean cut look, I find Van Buren’s choice of hair stylings personally offensive. I am triggered by all photos of his shaggy, shaggy locks.
  2. Game of Thrones: I’ve tried. I’ve tried twice. Both times I made it through Season 1, Episode 5. I’ve never felt the need to go back for Episode 6. I tuned in for the last season just to triple confirm I wasn’t missing out on anything. Confirmed.

And while we are at it—

  1. Dragons: All images, iconography, or other interpretations of dragons must go. Their fire breathing ways are out of touch with our currently warming planet.
  2. The Gatekeepers: Every year in high school, we read a requisitely depressing bit of non-fiction. The Hot Zone, Nickel and Dimed, Fast Food Nation, Into the Wild, and Into Thin Air to name a few cheery tomes. The Gatekeepers was about how unlikely it is any student will be accepted into the college of his or her choice. As an anxiety prone eleventh grader who lived my life under intense self-imposed grade-related pressure, my school telling me I was never getting into college was not psychologically beneficial. Given the Great College Admissions Scandal of 2019, I hazard a guess this academic mania has only increased in the last 15 years; ambitious young zealots are being driven to further extremes by their teachers telling them they will never amount to anything.
  3. Oh, the Places You’ll Go: The fact that children are being taught they can go anywhere in life except to their first-choice college is cruel.
  4. Dune: Locations are called names like, “The Minor Erg.” I’m out.
  5. Zachary Taylor: For such a tough guy, his death was unceremonious. He was taken out by food poisoning courtesy of a bunch of cherries and a glass of milk. Such a weakling must be struck from the annals of our glorious history.
  6. Puppies: The intrusive little buggers steal all of the attention at parties when people should otherwise be listening to me with rapt, undivided, attention.
  7. Romeo and Juliet: Talk about your teenage hormones. The cringe inducing moments were augmented when my teacher specifically called on me to read the sexy bits aloud during English class. We did get to watch the 1968 film version after we finished reading the play. Juliet has a topless scene. That got the ninth grade’s attention.
  8. Any book where the protagonist speaks at length about his or her changing body.

Given the oodles of media I’d leap at the chance to ban, I look forward gleefully to my career with the FCC.

Sarah Brown sometimes goes by YDL (“Your Dear Leader”). Should you care to reach her, prostrate yourself on the floor, and summon her politely at sarah@browns-close.com, and on Twitter @BrownsClose1. “Close” is a British term for alley or cul-de-sac.

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