This He said what? No, he did not! blog is written to amuse, entertain, inform, and keep me from ulcers. After all, no matter what the girl says, a Southern woman always has an opinion. Mine are liberal and forgiving, funny and full of optimism. I wander across a variety of topic landscapes including, but not limited to: trumpism, writing, reading, swimming, bridge, families, horses, grandchildren, Ashland High School Class of 1964, University of Kentucky Wildcats,  and religion. Your opinions, if expressed nicely, are welcome too. Leave a comment below.

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He said what?
Oh, no he did not!

 History is being re-written! 
Me: Why they didn’t get it right the first time?

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  History is a passion of mine. Obviously, since I write historical fiction. 
  It’s distressing that so much of our history is based on fiction. And some of the misinformation comes from fiction writers. 
  Paul Revere is a good example of what I mean. 
  The story goes that prior to the Revolutionary War Paul Revere and one other rider signaled everyone that the British regulars were marching, and they’d better prepare.  That’s the way I learned it.
   In fact, historians point out there were as many as 40 men and a sixteen-year-old girl named Sybil Ludington involved in alerting the colonists. 
  But we got it wrong in our national memories because Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a poem about it (that I had to memorize).    Longfellow wrote the poem in 1861 at the start of the Civil War to stir patriotism in Northerners.
   I wrote a novella about the yellow fever outbreak in Memphis in 1878, and I would be horrified to think years from now schools would be teaching history from it. (For that you need to go to Molly Caldwell Crosby’s The American Plague.) 
  You would be shocked to find out how much American history we were taught in school is untrue. Let me give you some examples of what I learned in Kentucky schools that is baloney:
    --In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue and discovered North America. In fact, the poor directionally-challenged sailor thought he was discovering an uncharted part of Asia. Besides, the Norse had landed on North American shores hundreds of years earlier, and nobody taught me that either.
      --The Civil War was a battle over states’ rights. Can we get over this, please? The rich landowners in the South wanted to keep their Black slaves. Period. The End. I mean, it is even written in the secession speeches and documents of the rebellious states. Nothing noble about the Confederacy.
     --Witches were burned at the stake in early America. Nope, all but one of the convicted women were hanged. Nobody got burned but American students.
      --In the early west people carried their guns all around town. Truth is, most towns had gun control. For example, in Tombstone-- the wildest western town I know-- folks had to leave their guns with the sheriff when they came to town and pick them up when they left. Reminds me of renting shoes at a bowling alley.
   We must inject truth in our history, or we can’t press forward with vision. Or with historical fiction based on actual events.
 
 
 
 
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Cover design by Lynn Maples

 Thanks to the Germantown News for the nice story on “The Yellow Fever Revenge.”

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