Welcome to the Froggy Bottom Lounge
Make yourself at home. The bar is fully stocked.
Newcomers and Lurkers are welcome!.
Just jump right in and introduce yourself.
Just jump right in and introduce yourself.
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We like to both shake AND stir things up around here!
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Please recommend (and unrecommend the Cafe/Lounge from earlier)
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Hey! That 4 looks good on you!
It must be happy hour time somewhere …
LOL It is always 5 somewhere in the world and if it isn’t the patrons are to drunk to notice.
of mulled wine…
I’ll just sit it over here on the corner table…help yourselves, or make some up
Enjoy!
Make it with the chai tea bags and it would be even better!!!!
Save some for me.
I’m on medical leave for my CTS (just 3 weeks) and took a trip to my old stomping grounds…. the Monterey Peninsula. It’s so much fun to be here with friends and camera and without horrible-job-from-hell!
Hope you are feeling better soon!!!! Enjoy your trip.
Evenin’ folks…hope all is well!
Hi Psi!!!
wow, I opened this at 5:00 and this is all the action there was? Either everyone is out partying or everyone turned into a geezer tonight.
Or everyone’s power was out again.
Hi, Mary. I think you are reading my mind. No one is doing anything.
hi ks. How’s the bronchitis? Are you still alone?
I can’t believe it’s been this quiet tonight.
Picked up Teach a few hours ago from the quick trip to DC. I’m still coughing, but have slept a lot.
You still have power? How’s your sister doing?
I hate bronchitis — it’s so hard to sleep when at any minute you can erupt into a coughing fit.
I never lost power and my sister got hers back … sometime this morning I think. But a lot of people still don’t have it. I heard they are bringing crews in from other states to help out the Ameren crews.
Is she ok post surgery? I can’t imagine trying to deal with icey walks & streets feeling bad.
She’s doing well. In some ways the storm has put less of a crimp in her style than in the rest of ours. She has to walk slow anyway. 🙂
And she’s not supposed to drive. So she’s pretty much house bound for about another week. She just would rather be recuperating in her own house — so it’s good she’s got power back.
Did you end up getting hit with any ice?
No – just a tiny dusting of snow with a few pieces of sleety stuff. In the northern burbs they had some ice, but nothing to down power lines. We were fortune. We had very strong winds with the cold rain, and it just blew through.
Other than having to chase down our big rubber garbage can, it was a non-event. Except, of course, we went from fall to winter overnight.
I’m glad your sister had folks to take care of her. It’d be hard without family around.
Isn’t it strange how winter can just … arrive? It was 75 degrees a few days ago and now its a winter wonderland.
It was a nice day to stay inside and do things around the house.
Yes – that’s what I should have been doing. Instead, I read, e.g. articles from the women’s magazines my mom keeps sending me; gardening mags, seed catalogs, some of the stack of Christmas catalogs. Anything except cleaning and straightening.
Actually I spent a great deal of the day reading about the founding of Detroit 🙂
What was the book? (or article)?
Multiple books/articles. I had a stack of them that I’d been collecting and needed to go through and organize. I’m into French colonial history.
Yikes! I’m beginning to sound like one of my relatives in her homemaker’s chat room – what will I say next, best soap to scrub out the bathtub? My dad would be shocked, shocked!
I’m moving left, to avoid reading in a tiny column on the right.
Are you familiar with the Lakeside Series of Books? Ken collects them, and there are a couple from French colonialists dealing with Detroit. Many are first person narratives. I’ve read War on the Detroit by Thomas Verchères de Boucherville and James Foster ( I think that’s the one I’ve read), and there’s another by Cadilliac.
I’m not familiar with the series. Although isn’t the Vercheres account about the war of 1812?
I’ve been reading some of Cadillac’s letters (in translation) that are reprinted in some of the various state historical society publications. I have the Detroit Historical Society’s Cadillac and the Founding of Detroit.
The editor of the Lakeside Classics at this time was Milo Milton Quaife, the Secretary of the Burton Historical Collection, which is now in the Detroit Public Library. The “War on the Detroit” is a reprint of the journal of Vercheres. Additional a piece called “The Capitulation”, by “An Ohio Volunteer” is attached. It’s authorship is dubious and it is at least partially plagiarized, but it’s an account of the first year of the War of 1812. That’s to say of 1812.
I’ve heard of the Burton Historical Collection.
Does the series have anything earier? 1812 was really English/American — although there were still a lot of French left in the midwest at that time.
It’s one of the country great historical libraries (I’ve seen it rated as high as 3rd on some lists), but like everything else here is in danger because of the fragility of our economic base. I’d like to see is somewhere financially secure, but all one can do is cross one’s fingers and hope. If I won one those impossibly huge lotteries, I set up a foundation to protect and develop it. (KS: Joke – you know I would never buy a lottery ticket.)
Libraries take a lot of maintenance. People don’t appreciate that. But its’a well known collection, I’m sure that the danger is less than to some.
I had a student from Grosse Ile. Her family owns a nursery that was begun more than 350 years ago by her something Great grandfather whose very fertile farm was it’s beginning. Now they primarily sell azaleas that they’ve bred to survive northern winters. They were, of course, French.
Grosse Ile is our tony downriver suburb – or as some of my students call it, a “sublurb” or “subglub”, as it sits in the Detroit River.
I think I read that Cadillac originally landed his party on Grosse Ile, then they went back upstream to found the fort.
So is it a river or a straight that Detroit is on?
Doesn’t “le detroit” mean “the strait”? Locally it is called the Detroit River. But more technically, I think it would be defined as a Strait.
It means the narrows, I belive, as in the narrows between the Big Lakes – St. Claire and Erie.
It’s amazing how deep the French roots are in the midwest. When the Germans and Irish moved in, their cultures more or less took over. But the French families didn’t leave, they just eventually integrated in.
My own French great-great grandfather married an Irish girl who was right off the boat and that was it for the French heritage. As far as my family is concerned –we’re Irish. At least until my dad started exploring the French roots.
How families define themselves ethnically is always interesting. My mother disliked her family and thought my fathers Scottish immigrant parents were fabulous. So my sisters and I were raised as Scottish. Tartan ties and handmade sweaters with the family tartan as trim. Tartan skirts for the girls. Scottish dances on Friday nights at the Scottish Presbyterian church wre we ate fish and chips. But my mother’s family were German immigrants on her father’s side and French/German (Alsace/Lorraine) on her mothers. It wasn’t until I got old enough to understand some of my pathology that it all made sense.
That’s — “her pathology” — not mine. What an embarrassing slip.
I feel like I’m interrupting a private conversation…got room for one more? 🙂
You’re up late?
I fell asleep a couple of hours ago, but I’m awake again. And hey, it seems to be the only way to catch up with you in the cafe.
I’ve been reading Under the Banner of Heaven. Your Detroit reading sounds a little less disturbing, though.
I don’t know … wars, missionaries, conniving politicians, unscrupulous businessmen .. could be today 🙂
I checked my collection of Lakeside classics. I also have “The Western Country in the 17th Century, ” which is two separate journals by Cadillac and Pierre Liette boun together. There is another interesting book, but it is not about French colonial history. It a two edition set (’47 & ’48) entitled, “A Frenchman in Lincoln’s America.” It is a republished translation of Ernest Duvergier de Hauranne’s Huit Mois en Amérique: Lettres et Notes de Voyage, 1864-1865.
des Liette was an interesting person. At least, he made interesting observations. 🙂
It’s been I while since I read this and I remember more about Cadillac’s piece that Lisette’s.
Kidspeak shamed into giving my conquest of the evil Babylonians to answer mary’s questions about the Lakeside series.
Just deferring to the more informed one – even if he can’t type.
evil Babylonians?
Long story – While I was dispatching the Koreans, the Babylonians and the Mongols attacked my colonies. I knocked the Mongols back pretty easily and they sued for peace. The Babylonians would not cease their unprovoked assault, so I’m forced to destroy them. The Chinese are my allies, but they are getting nervous at my increasing domination of the world. I will not attack them, but I have been squirreling away an attack fleet w/ marines if they try anything.
But back to the French.
Teach’s addiction ;).
I can stop anytime I want.
Certainly!
Are you getting over bronchitis? I haven’t seen you around much this week.
I think I’m getting the same thing CBtY was home with this week Icky sinuses, cough, headache.
Not really. I’ve had it for about 6 weeks now. It’s really getting old. Can’t sleep more than a couple of hours at a time.
I hope you don’t. My sympathies on the kid being sick. Not fun, especially if you are under the weather, too. Pampering is essential – but not exactly in the natural repertoire of boys!
I am fading, however. I just slipped into microsleep, sitting here and realized I’d typed 5 lines of F’s.
Goodnight, CG, MB.
I’m fading too. G’night whoever is left.