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The History of … the Catskills

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Thinking about summer vacations and the Catskills came up in conversation.  It got me wondering how it became a popular northeast escape.

The Catskills were discovered by Henry Hudson, the explorer who sailed up the self-named Hudson Bay searching for the elusive Northwest Passage in the early 1600’s.  Along his journey he dubbed this area of present day New York State along the Hudson River the Catskills and claimed it for the Dutch.  The name most likely came from combining the Dutch word for creek which is “kill” with a reference to the local mountain lions.

The Catskills were immortalized by two great American writers, Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper who wrote in the early 1800’s.  Irving wrote about this area with “The Story of Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”  Cooper’s contribution was even more profound.  His took a romantic look at this region with his “Leatherstocking Tales” which include “The Last of the Mohicans.”  His writings made the area famous and are still known through popular movies and television shows based on his frontiersman Natty Bumppo.

The art movement dubbed the Hudson River School brought further fame and fortune to the Catskills.  Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand and Frederic Edwin Church were the leading artists.  They produced beautifully lit landscapes of the area which were seen in art exhibitions.  The movement considered nature to be like God so that if human beings were in their works they would be small comparatively to nature.  It was a great advertisement and led to the inevitable nature tourism that followed.

The idea of a vacation was controversial in 1800.  Idleness was considered a sin.  However, Americans found a way around that by taking vigorous vacations that involved lots of walking and exploring.  In that vein New York State commissioned and opened the Catskill Mountain House in 1824.  Getting to the hotel was an adventure requiring guests to hike the last leg of the trip when carriages could go no further.  Its success led to many other get away spots opening in the Catskills.  Steamboats and railroads made the area even more accessible.

Business came to the Catskills in the form of tanneries and quarries.  Inevitable conflict between those who wanted to keep the mountains the same for their beauty and those who wanted to develop ensued.  The Ashokan Reservoir project pitted locals against developers who wanted to dam a river in the Catskills for water for New York City.  Eventually six dams were built in the Catskills for city water.

Prohibition arrived in the 1920s.  The Catskills became a haven for bootleggers; to hide, to vacation and to produce and distribute alcohol.  Some say there is still bootlegger treasure in the Catskills.

Post prohibition the Catskills again became a tourist refuge.  Movies like “Dirty Dancing” show the summer camp type atmosphere of the Catskills in the 1950s and 60s.  The famous Woodstock Festival was held in the Catskills.  The current decline of the Catskills for tourism began in the early 70’s when travel habits changed (people wanted to go to more exotic places).  Also, more women in the workforce meant they couldn’t go away for summers anymore.  The smaller places went under first followed by the big fortress like hotels. Today camping, fishing, hiking and other outdoor activities are still enjoyed by tourists who come to the Catskills, just on a smaller scale. 

The History of … Afghanistan

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The beautiful Kart-e-Sakhi shrine in Kabul

The drama of the Afghanistan exit is behind us but there seems to be so many competing tribes and government factions still there.  Perhaps this is because of the many empires that have ruled this land over the millennia and its location at the crossroads of east and west. 

The earliest civilization in Afghanistan consisted of the ancestors of the Pashtun people who today live in the south of Afghanistan.  The first empire to conquer and rule Afghanistan was the Persians from about the 6th century BC to the 4th century.  They brought the religion of Zoroastrianism which introduced the concept of one god to Afghanistan.

Alexander the Great of Greece came through next in the 4th century.  He built a city named after himself which is probably the current city of Kandahar.  He also built a fort at Bagram the site of the former US airbase.  The Greeks introduced their system of writing to the region.

After Alexander died at the young age of 32, his empire slowly broke up.  Eventually, a more Greek-like empire called Bactria ruled in the north while Indian rulers came to power in the south.  They introduced Buddhism to Afghanistan.

The Kushans from the north united the country by combining a Greek form of government with a type of Buddhism religion.  They ruled from about the 1st to the 3rd centuries during the height of wealth creation in Afghanistan through trade along the Silk Road. 

By the time that Arabs arrived in the 7th century the Persians and Huns had both gained ground.  Eventually the Arabic alphabet became favored over the Greek and Islam gained a stronghold as the most favored religion.  Control shifted back locally quickly, given how far away the caliphate capital was in Baghdad.  For a brief period the Turks took control but fell to the Mongols who tore through the country killing an estimated million people in a week.

The Mughals were the last Central Asian empire to rule Afghanistan before a tribal council, referred to as a Loya Jirga, was held by Pashtun elders in the mid-1700s.  They agreed to create a kingdom of Afghans which was another name for the Pashtuns.  They drove the last of the foreign rulers out of Afghanistan and fought against British invaders in the 1800s and early 1900s. 

During the rest of the 1900s, part of Afghanistan was given to the new country of Pakistan, the Soviets invaded and fought for control of Afghanistan for a decade and the Taliban took hold in the south and spread.  The rest most of us know.  The Taliban let in other terrorists which eventually led to 911 and the US invasion.

A long history of conflict, conquest and instability runs through Afghanistan.  If “the history of” holds true there will be more in their future. 

The History of … the Knights Templar

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I was watching the third Indiana Jones movie with the kids and got curious about the knight at the end who is there to protect the cup of Christ.  You remember, “He chose, poorly.”  Were there really a group of knights who protected holy relics?  In fact there were, kind of.  The Knights Templar were founded to protect Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land.  Their role expanded by necessity to the defense of the Holy Land.  For 200 years they fulfilled their mission and were well respected in the west.  However, after Christians were expelled from the east they were brought down by a French king who wanted their wealth.

After the first crusade, which was launched to take Jerusalem back from its current Muslim rulers, the area around Jerusalem was still very dangerous.  Christian pilgrims were regularly set upon by Bedouins in their travels.  There were many instances, but one particularly where 200 pilgrims were slaughtered at Easter on their way to the River Jordan stuck in the public imagination. 

In response to this atrocity, Hugh of Payns, a French knight who fought in the first crusade, was asked by the king of Jerusalem to start “the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Jerusalem” in 1119.  They were given the al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount which had been turned into a temporary palace for the king of Jerusalem to live.  The Dome of the Rock, also on the Temple Mount, had been turned into a church called the “Temple of the Lord.”  This is why the knights were eventually called the Templars or the Knights Templar.  The idea behind the formation of the Templars was to combine knighthood with being a monk.  Their founding principles were chastity, obedience and poverty.

Once it was formed, the new order found quick support in the west.  Christian backing for control of the Holy Land was deep and spiritual.  The Templars also got support and recognition from the pope.  With this financial support and recognition, their mission soon expanded from protecting Christians to protecting the Holy Land itself.  They wore white robes with a red cross to symbolize their willingness to become martyrs for the Holy Land.  Over 200 years they helped fight Muslims in Spain and Portugal, as well as, participated in the eastern crusades.  They also became known as bankers to Europe because they were honest, meticulous and provided a form of money transfer for pilgrims and crusaders.

Eventually the tide turned.  While the Holy Land was important to the west, Europeans by and large did not want to settle there so the Islamic world slowly overwhelmed the crusaders.  When the last major Christian city, Acre, fell in 1291, the loss of the Holy Land was seen as disfavor from God.  Since the Templars mission was to protect the Holy Land some blame fell on them.

They made efforts to retake the holy land, however, this time Muslims had destroyed castles, infrastructure, crops and anything else that would be useful to regain.  There wasn’t much left to re-conquer.

Eventually, in 1307, a corrupt king, Philip IV of France, who wanted the Templars wealth, charged them with heresy.  He used a loophole in a papal edict to get around their papal protection, he used lawyers to figure this out.  The king’s charges were later found to be without merit, despite some odd induction rituals of the Templars.  However, it was too late.  The Knights Templar had already been tortured, some burned at the stake, and their wealth and power stolen.  Public opinion was against them already because of the fall of the east.  The order was suppressed and the few survivors fled, many living out their days in monasteries.

After their fall, the Templars lived on in folklore.  Perhaps because of the quickness of their downfall, mystery shrouded who was left and what artifacts they might possess.  It was rumored they might have the shroud of Turin or even the Holy Grail.  To this day popular movies, like the Indiana Jones one I as watching and books like “The Da Vinci Code” keep their legend alive.

The History of … Halloween

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It was a very exciting holiday this year at our house because so many people made such an effort to come up with clever ways to get candy to the kids.  With COVID raging it was wonderful to have something normalish to lift spirits.  It did get me thinking about the history of Halloween.

It appears that Halloween comes from a combination of Celtic and Roman holidays updated by the Catholic Church.  The Celts who lived in present day Europe over 2500 years ago believed in a god of the dead called Samhain.  It was believed that every year Samhain fought with the sun and the sun lost which meant there was less light during the winter.  The Celts had a rite in the fall to help the sun.  They built huge fires which they thought would free the sun.  Since they also believed that Samhain sent the dead to pick out who would die in the coming year they would wear costumes and masks so they would not be recognized and picked to die.

When the Romans’ conquered the Celts about 2000 years ago they brought their own traditions.  They had a harvest festival called Pomona where they gave each other apples and another fall celebration to honor the dead called Parentalia.  Over time, all three events combined to form one large holiday.

In the 800s the Catholic Church wanted to change this holiday and make it more focused on Christianity.  They wanted to make it about the saints.  It was called All Saints Day or All Hallows Day.  Therefore, the day before was known as All Hallows Eve.  This day that came from the ancient ideas of dead walking the earth, costumes and even apples became Halloween.

The History of … Border Walls

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Great Wall of China at Sunrise

Given the recent election, border walls are currently all the rage (or all the worry depending on where you stand).  I thought it would be interesting to look back at the history of some famous walls and see why they were built and if they were successful.

Perhaps the most famous wall in the world is the Great Wall of China.  It is commonly on lists of the Seven Wonders of the World and can be seen from Earth’s orbit.  It was built over thousands of years in sections.  In 221 BC the Chinese Emperor Shi Huangdi began the first national wall project in an attempt to join walls that had been built in localities around China to protect farmers and villagers from looting.  The emperor’s goal was to link the Chinese as a people (to keep non-Chinese out and Chinese in), as well as, to unify the new country under him.  This unity would come from the protection the wall would bring and from the process of building the wall, which would bring people together in their work.  It was finished in 214 BC and was considered a great success.  The wall was repaired and expanded during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644 AD) and was considered vital to its defense.  After the Ming period the wall was no longer considered vital to defense because China expanded northward beyond the wall.  Eventually it became a tourist attraction with the most popular portion being near Beijing.  The main wall running, east to west, measures about 5,500 miles while the entire wall with all its branches is estimated at over 13,000 miles.

Hadrian’s Wall was built around 122 AD by the Roman Emperor Hadrian.  It was constructed to run east to west across Britannia from the North Sea to the Irish Sea.  It marked the northern boundary of the Roman Empire and was 73 miles long.  It is unclear exactly what its prime purpose was.  Perhaps it was built to protect the colony in the south from the northern tribes.  Or possibly to control flows of people and therefore taxation.  Or finally to be a visible manifestation of the power of the Roman Empire.  Maybe it was a combination of all three.  It was abandoned by the next emperor who tried to push north but failed to bring the northern tribes under his rule.  It was reoccupied then by the Roman Empire until the empire itself began to crumble and was left in the 4th century AD when military assistance was needed closer to home.

Construction of the walls of Constantinople started in 324 AD when Constantine made it the capital of the Roman Empire.  A second layer of wall called the Theodosian Wall was added in 410 AD as the city of Byzantium, now known as Constantinople, grew.  The walls of Constantinople were predated by two sets of walls built before and just after the time of Christ which were destroyed when the wealthy city changed hands.  The walls of Constantinople (and the second layer, the Theodosian Wall, which turned into several layers) protected the great city of Constantinople for hundreds of years from siege and even a massive earthquake.  Constantinople was finally taken when the Turks acquired cannons and after the city’s population was lowered as a result of the Crusades.  Constantinople fell in 1453.  Today the city of Constantinople has been renamed Istanbul and is the capitol of Turkey.  Remnants of the inner and outer walls that protected the city for hundreds of years can still be seen.

In the 20th century the Berlin Wall was used by the Soviet Union to keep people from escaping communist rule.  It was built in 1961 across and around the city of West Berlin to separate East Germany from West Germany.  It was called the “Anti-Fascist Bulwark” by the communists.  Before its construction over 3 million people had escaped from east to west.  The wall consisted of over 85 miles of concrete topped with pipe and wire fencing.  A second fence was built behind the first fence and all buildings and houses in between the two were destroyed to make a “death strip” where there was no cover and wall guards would have a clear shot at anyone trying to escape.  Over the 28 years it was up, only 5000 people escaped and at least 200 were killed in the attempt.  It was effective at stemming the original tide of millions of defectors.  The wall was torn down in 1989 when the USSR fell.

The construction of the Israeli Wall or separation barrier started in 2000.  It runs along the Green Line which is the 1949 armistice line between Jordan and Israel.  It was set up to stop terrorist attacks from the west bank and is considered a success by that measure.  In some places, particularly urban areas where snipers have been an issue, it is a 30 foot concrete wall.  However, in less populated areas it takes the form of fencing, barbed wire, ditches and motion detectors.  About 250 miles of the wall have been completed with plans for another 130 miles.