Fall weather in the great central valley of California is something special.
Its still a "no coats needed" sort of experience.
Its a kind of weather that some days you want to hang out in the shade and others you want to basque in the bucolically warm sun.
Our city of Merced is an 80,000 plus city surrounded by agriculture fields of almonds,pistachios, dairy, peaches and nectarines. We even have some cotton fields within our city borders.
This year great piles of almonds are gather on the ground and swept into rows and dragged to processing plants. The hulls are whacked off and constitute the vast majority of the tree's product and reason for existence for the year. This year is a another great year. The trees were burdened with branches almost touching the ground. It is the first year that I can remember that there are giant piles of almonds in their hulls neatly labeled and waiting for processing. In most of the years the processing plants have kept up with harvest.
I have been told that there is no fear the price will ravage the farmers because of the quantity. The market place for most of these nuts is not domestic. We export most of these gems to Asia. They are high prized in their consumption. Can you imagine if we got fancy with our Chinese tariffs? Our valley depends on exporting these goods.
Get out there and enjoy some fall if you have any left. The folks in the mountains will not have to water or mow their lawns much longer. We wait for the first serious rainfall. Here in the valley it may be after Halloween.
: ) Pat
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Saturday, September 8, 2012
Modern Speech Writing to a Clear Choice
In the last two weeks we have seen some amazing speech writing and performances by modern political candidates and their staffs.
Its easy to look at what was forgotten. Both conventions missed a classic element in their content. The Republicans forgot to mention the 80,000 men and women at harms way fighting our batles around the world. The Democrats forgot to evoke God in their speeches. Doe it make Republicans less concerned with the military or Democrats God less? No. Clearly a gotcha moment was shared by both. But now with the quick turnaround with the news cycle, it seems that the focus is on gotcha rather than transparency.
Transparency is the new catch phrases of the era. It reflects are ineptitude in making our points clearly about who we are. Look beyond the rhetoric and see what is behind the organizations.
Its true the parties are on different tracks. The choices of how we get to where will be are clearly defined. Transparency put it that way. Despite rhetorical devices and beautiful metaphoric images, the message from both conventions is clear.
Presidential candidate Romney is sure that the way to increase jobs is to make business climate ideal for the millionaires that generate job for the country. Supply side, trickle down and less government intervention is the hallmark of his campaign. Reductions in government spending and fraud would be recovered to benefit the wealthy 1 percent that generate new jobs by capitalizing with their businesses. Military spending would increase because this is were the party thinks that this is where government should exercise its duty. In the campaign they want to eliminate the affordable health care plan. Health care is a major industry and should be protected like a major industry, their losses are their losses and their profits are their profits. Romney is no social conservative so their is no reaching out to the poor or the less fortunate in our society. While he claims he was poor growing up, his sympathy to that is questionable. His claim is that only a true businessman can understand job growth.
Presidential candidate and sitting President Obama has a very different prospective. His agenda is more grass roots. He feels that job growth has to come from the bottom up. Infrastructure and healthcare are his emphasis. His way to grow the economy with job growth comes from people who spend money will generate new jobs. The country will be left with a viable infrastructure. Teachers jobs have been saved through support in people infrastructure. In recent times the Obama presidency lead to investing in the middle class through job support allowed more money to be spent in local facilities. It kept teachers in homes. It supported police officers and firefighters. His plans allowed for major work to be done in our town on roads and bridges and a train overpass. So the economy will begin to grow out of its unemployment by catching up and nation building at home. Its a very different agenda.
Its clear to me that if either candidate gets into office we will need to bring the troops home from Afganistan. We will need to support our growing elderly population, of which I am one. We will need to bring in the rapid cost growth of health care and tuition. We may have to look at what we subsidize in the private sector. Are those subsidies still doing what we wanted them to do. We need to subsidize the programs that help the people that cannot truly afford their lives without it.
Despite all of the hoopla... and I am one to enjoy hoopla, the bottom line of what needs to be done is pretty clear. Congress needs to pitch out its pledges work together with the president and craft a recovery act that will work.
Just my opinion.
Pat
Its easy to look at what was forgotten. Both conventions missed a classic element in their content. The Republicans forgot to mention the 80,000 men and women at harms way fighting our batles around the world. The Democrats forgot to evoke God in their speeches. Doe it make Republicans less concerned with the military or Democrats God less? No. Clearly a gotcha moment was shared by both. But now with the quick turnaround with the news cycle, it seems that the focus is on gotcha rather than transparency.
Transparency is the new catch phrases of the era. It reflects are ineptitude in making our points clearly about who we are. Look beyond the rhetoric and see what is behind the organizations.
Its true the parties are on different tracks. The choices of how we get to where will be are clearly defined. Transparency put it that way. Despite rhetorical devices and beautiful metaphoric images, the message from both conventions is clear.
Presidential candidate Romney is sure that the way to increase jobs is to make business climate ideal for the millionaires that generate job for the country. Supply side, trickle down and less government intervention is the hallmark of his campaign. Reductions in government spending and fraud would be recovered to benefit the wealthy 1 percent that generate new jobs by capitalizing with their businesses. Military spending would increase because this is were the party thinks that this is where government should exercise its duty. In the campaign they want to eliminate the affordable health care plan. Health care is a major industry and should be protected like a major industry, their losses are their losses and their profits are their profits. Romney is no social conservative so their is no reaching out to the poor or the less fortunate in our society. While he claims he was poor growing up, his sympathy to that is questionable. His claim is that only a true businessman can understand job growth.
Presidential candidate and sitting President Obama has a very different prospective. His agenda is more grass roots. He feels that job growth has to come from the bottom up. Infrastructure and healthcare are his emphasis. His way to grow the economy with job growth comes from people who spend money will generate new jobs. The country will be left with a viable infrastructure. Teachers jobs have been saved through support in people infrastructure. In recent times the Obama presidency lead to investing in the middle class through job support allowed more money to be spent in local facilities. It kept teachers in homes. It supported police officers and firefighters. His plans allowed for major work to be done in our town on roads and bridges and a train overpass. So the economy will begin to grow out of its unemployment by catching up and nation building at home. Its a very different agenda.
Its clear to me that if either candidate gets into office we will need to bring the troops home from Afganistan. We will need to support our growing elderly population, of which I am one. We will need to bring in the rapid cost growth of health care and tuition. We may have to look at what we subsidize in the private sector. Are those subsidies still doing what we wanted them to do. We need to subsidize the programs that help the people that cannot truly afford their lives without it.
Despite all of the hoopla... and I am one to enjoy hoopla, the bottom line of what needs to be done is pretty clear. Congress needs to pitch out its pledges work together with the president and craft a recovery act that will work.
Just my opinion.
Pat
Friday, August 24, 2012
Oliver the Kitten
I have just completed the watercolor book, Oliver the Little Kitten.
I started making from a watercolor notebook that Sue gave me for Christmas. The hand made paper and the the binding were made in India. The paper is so rough and absorbent that making color changes in the watercolor washes was pretty easy and really fun. It was a little more difficult to make scenes that were realistic. The book by virtue of its media became pretty impressionistic.
What is really fun with this book is that the aspect is pretty extreme about 4 by 9. The 9 inches is the height.
In 51 pages the reader taken from a decidedly little kitten of about 8 months old to becoming a little more adult at a year and a half.
I have written commentary for the book. It outlines Oliver's favorite activities and how he has integrated into the colony with a couple of human adults and two other male cats.
I have grown as an illustrator in the process of doing this book. Unlike most books that are illustrated after the story is written and the quality of the illustration and the writing are even, this book was made over eight months and there are some pages that are not very good from the the illustrator's prospective. There are also some pages and illustrations that I am very proud to be the illustrator.
It was really fun to do a diary of sorts of a nonhuman animal. I also cut my chops on how to do background furniture and day to day situations when painting Oliver in his day to day activities.
I showed the almost completed book. My dad was pleased at the voice I gave the little kitten in the story.
The illustrative style for this little book is a pen sketch done with a watercolor wash over it. I used .5 lines in the sketches that are made from unipen pens. They are permanent and do not lose their point easily in the illustration.
Most of the pages use a common watercolor palate of yellow ochre, Quin gold and Paynes Gray. Payne's Grey is a combination of lamp black with Ultramarine blue.
Olilver is a tuxedo cat with yellow green eyes.
Each page as been scanned is will soon be sent to my niece and sister who have shown interest in making it into an E-book.
I think that I will take the scans and print the results on a color printer and see if a canvas like paper will work for it. It might me fun to have as a printed book as well as an E-book.
: ) Pat
I started making from a watercolor notebook that Sue gave me for Christmas. The hand made paper and the the binding were made in India. The paper is so rough and absorbent that making color changes in the watercolor washes was pretty easy and really fun. It was a little more difficult to make scenes that were realistic. The book by virtue of its media became pretty impressionistic.
What is really fun with this book is that the aspect is pretty extreme about 4 by 9. The 9 inches is the height.
In 51 pages the reader taken from a decidedly little kitten of about 8 months old to becoming a little more adult at a year and a half.
I have written commentary for the book. It outlines Oliver's favorite activities and how he has integrated into the colony with a couple of human adults and two other male cats.
I have grown as an illustrator in the process of doing this book. Unlike most books that are illustrated after the story is written and the quality of the illustration and the writing are even, this book was made over eight months and there are some pages that are not very good from the the illustrator's prospective. There are also some pages and illustrations that I am very proud to be the illustrator.
It was really fun to do a diary of sorts of a nonhuman animal. I also cut my chops on how to do background furniture and day to day situations when painting Oliver in his day to day activities.
I showed the almost completed book. My dad was pleased at the voice I gave the little kitten in the story.
The illustrative style for this little book is a pen sketch done with a watercolor wash over it. I used .5 lines in the sketches that are made from unipen pens. They are permanent and do not lose their point easily in the illustration.
Most of the pages use a common watercolor palate of yellow ochre, Quin gold and Paynes Gray. Payne's Grey is a combination of lamp black with Ultramarine blue.
Olilver is a tuxedo cat with yellow green eyes.
Each page as been scanned is will soon be sent to my niece and sister who have shown interest in making it into an E-book.
I think that I will take the scans and print the results on a color printer and see if a canvas like paper will work for it. It might me fun to have as a printed book as well as an E-book.
: ) Pat
Sunday, August 5, 2012
1TB The New Floppy
I recently added a new addition to the back up arsenel. Its a 1 Tetra Byte Seagate goflex portable hard drive.
Its about the size of the small external floppy drives that we used to use with computers in the 90's. When macs came out they revolutionized the industry with a hard plastic shuttered floppy made by Sony. Computer enthusiasts would spend hours pushing in the floppy and pulling out the floppy as it wrote to this external disk of 400k. They started out at 10 dollars each. We cheered as the price went down and they became double sided. We even didn't have to turn them over. Imagine that!
Flash to the present. The new floppy is a on TB on a go flex. They sell for about 100 dollars at all the major stores from Target to Best Buy. They do not need a separate power source. They use the the power from the USB port to drive the backup. My what back up. I bought the Seagate version. It is easy to but on your Mac Network and dump off all the data and photos you need. When done, you take the hard drive to the trash. Then unplug it from the USB and store it away. It does not need to be up and running on your network at all times. Pretty cool.
It is true that you really need at least 3 back ups of all your original work. I have two hard drives on my network as well as a personal cloud network away from the usual attachments.
My latest project... well its taken over 8 months.. is a watercolor depiction of our little kitten's life an adjustment to the Merced home. It is painted in an extreme formatted East Indian paper watercolor book of watercolor paper that absorbs watercolor paints like crazy. The current page count is 47. I think I will ended it at 49 or 50. Each page has been scanned and straightened in photoshop. I am pretty excited that it is almost done. I think that last page will be a family portrait with Oliver in the middle. He has to share the spotlight with the two other older cats.
This 1 TB portable hard drive is the last piece of mind I have in making sure that the pages of Oliver the Kitten survive. Cammie and Mikie think that it might make a great e-book.
It seems a little ironic that we were backing up our tiny files that we thought were so precious so many years ago, yet now many people that push so many pixels around the screen fail to back up to a couple of spots. Save those family photos in at least three places.
Take it from one with experience in these matters... hard drives fail. Don't let them be the end of your work! I am just saying..... : ) Pat
Its about the size of the small external floppy drives that we used to use with computers in the 90's. When macs came out they revolutionized the industry with a hard plastic shuttered floppy made by Sony. Computer enthusiasts would spend hours pushing in the floppy and pulling out the floppy as it wrote to this external disk of 400k. They started out at 10 dollars each. We cheered as the price went down and they became double sided. We even didn't have to turn them over. Imagine that!
Flash to the present. The new floppy is a on TB on a go flex. They sell for about 100 dollars at all the major stores from Target to Best Buy. They do not need a separate power source. They use the the power from the USB port to drive the backup. My what back up. I bought the Seagate version. It is easy to but on your Mac Network and dump off all the data and photos you need. When done, you take the hard drive to the trash. Then unplug it from the USB and store it away. It does not need to be up and running on your network at all times. Pretty cool.
It is true that you really need at least 3 back ups of all your original work. I have two hard drives on my network as well as a personal cloud network away from the usual attachments.
My latest project... well its taken over 8 months.. is a watercolor depiction of our little kitten's life an adjustment to the Merced home. It is painted in an extreme formatted East Indian paper watercolor book of watercolor paper that absorbs watercolor paints like crazy. The current page count is 47. I think I will ended it at 49 or 50. Each page has been scanned and straightened in photoshop. I am pretty excited that it is almost done. I think that last page will be a family portrait with Oliver in the middle. He has to share the spotlight with the two other older cats.
This 1 TB portable hard drive is the last piece of mind I have in making sure that the pages of Oliver the Kitten survive. Cammie and Mikie think that it might make a great e-book.
It seems a little ironic that we were backing up our tiny files that we thought were so precious so many years ago, yet now many people that push so many pixels around the screen fail to back up to a couple of spots. Save those family photos in at least three places.
Take it from one with experience in these matters... hard drives fail. Don't let them be the end of your work! I am just saying..... : ) Pat
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Olympisized
I believe that this is the first Olympics that many people have seen in High Definition. The old TV's have been replaced by the High Definition ones throughout the land. I must admit the once you see them broadcasted this way, you are pretty well hooked. You may be watching sports you really don't care much about.
Its been pretty cool. There is the bright blue of the pool. The opening ceremony with its novel... I mean in both ways display... it designed to tell the story of Great Briton along with highlighting the celebrities and the culture of the country. It had a dramatic understated theme. It was an extravaganza but not in the sense of the in your face China Olympics. Sue was happy to see the Queen at the opening even though her facial expression, or rather lack of it was disconcerting. She was there however along with the current James Bond.
As there are many channels on the Direct TV set up that are affliliated with NBC, the media sponsers of the games, it has been fun searching around and finding that one channel is almost totally devoted the the boxing venue. This afternoon I came across the station where the basketball was alive and well.
My most interesting "finds" have been the whitewater kayak competition and the archery team competition. The women's whitewater competition was dominated by a 44 year old Czech. It is amazing the venue that was manufactured for the event.The height and depth of the concrete channel with huge artificial boulders added to it and gigantic pumps that recycle the water in ferocious turbulence was pretty exciting to see. I couldn't help but think of the novella Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan. The person in the book goes into the Cleveland Wrecking Yard in San Francisco and buys a section of trout stream. Someone was clearly buying sections of whitewater (designing and engineering it) so that this sport could happen at this venue. The coverage of the sport was very exciting.
The archery was a wild team event. The US team had knocked off the favored South Korean team and had only the Italians to beat for the gold medal. Sporting technologically "tricked" out bows the men drew their 50 pound strings and aimed at a target a long distance away. It got down to who could calm their hearts down and gently release the string so that the arrow would pierce the air and hit the target. After doing plenty of archery in my youth it still relied on the release. The winners did not "throw flowers" or jerk the release. The fingers had to release the arrow to its target while the thumb rested up against the checks. The results of the contest whose certainty wavered throughout proved the Italians had a better team by two points. It was a contest that will never be shown in prime time. It was pretty exciting to a former archer.
The coverage of the sports even with the ability to time shift has resulted in some people running around kind of grumpy. The coverage ends at 1 am each night. There have been dramatic decreases in people out shopping in the stores of Merced when the Olympics are on TV. We have become a nation glued to the TV for some good news. These athletes have a chance to give us this chance. We all know that the good feeling afterwards is temporary ... it still will keep us glued.
Take care and blink those eyes every so often...
: ) Pat
Its been pretty cool. There is the bright blue of the pool. The opening ceremony with its novel... I mean in both ways display... it designed to tell the story of Great Briton along with highlighting the celebrities and the culture of the country. It had a dramatic understated theme. It was an extravaganza but not in the sense of the in your face China Olympics. Sue was happy to see the Queen at the opening even though her facial expression, or rather lack of it was disconcerting. She was there however along with the current James Bond.
As there are many channels on the Direct TV set up that are affliliated with NBC, the media sponsers of the games, it has been fun searching around and finding that one channel is almost totally devoted the the boxing venue. This afternoon I came across the station where the basketball was alive and well.
My most interesting "finds" have been the whitewater kayak competition and the archery team competition. The women's whitewater competition was dominated by a 44 year old Czech. It is amazing the venue that was manufactured for the event.The height and depth of the concrete channel with huge artificial boulders added to it and gigantic pumps that recycle the water in ferocious turbulence was pretty exciting to see. I couldn't help but think of the novella Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan. The person in the book goes into the Cleveland Wrecking Yard in San Francisco and buys a section of trout stream. Someone was clearly buying sections of whitewater (designing and engineering it) so that this sport could happen at this venue. The coverage of the sport was very exciting.
The archery was a wild team event. The US team had knocked off the favored South Korean team and had only the Italians to beat for the gold medal. Sporting technologically "tricked" out bows the men drew their 50 pound strings and aimed at a target a long distance away. It got down to who could calm their hearts down and gently release the string so that the arrow would pierce the air and hit the target. After doing plenty of archery in my youth it still relied on the release. The winners did not "throw flowers" or jerk the release. The fingers had to release the arrow to its target while the thumb rested up against the checks. The results of the contest whose certainty wavered throughout proved the Italians had a better team by two points. It was a contest that will never be shown in prime time. It was pretty exciting to a former archer.
The coverage of the sports even with the ability to time shift has resulted in some people running around kind of grumpy. The coverage ends at 1 am each night. There have been dramatic decreases in people out shopping in the stores of Merced when the Olympics are on TV. We have become a nation glued to the TV for some good news. These athletes have a chance to give us this chance. We all know that the good feeling afterwards is temporary ... it still will keep us glued.
Take care and blink those eyes every so often...
: ) Pat
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Free Food and Freelander Culture
There is a friend of mind that grew up in a different generation and somehow developed a mind set that if there was anything out there that was free it was his. When people had parties, he would crash the the event so that he could "celebrate" with them and eat the free food. If he was remotely connected he was there bellied up to the table for a portion. When someone had talent, he would be there to use that talent for free of course and when called on it he backed off and claimed it was the person's privilege to comp him with their knowledge. At times it was a a cool ego boost to the person that had talent. I can teach him how to do it... blah blah blah. No, he really didn't want to learn or go through the steps to learn, he wanted your shortcuts and better yet do it for him for free.
It probably should not be strange to me that when it came to politics, the same thing was true in his philosophy. He did not want the government to do anything except defend him militarily. They should not collect the taxes to pay for schools for his kids or provide for the support of old people through social security. Certainly we don't need to buy health insurance, as a part of the freeloading culture thinks, this is what is coming to me for my awesome contributions to society. I deserve to get this for free and not pay for it.... someone else will cover me. If you make me pay for what I need, you take away my freeeeeeedom. On the other side this group always wants private enterprise to control the market place. If you need a surgery... pay for it yourself sucker... or get out of the way.
When it came to software, this person was first in line for a "free" copy of what the rest of the group bought. When software became expensive and the rest of the group decided to buy it in shares... this person decided not to buy it at all...and then when he had to buy in, it was by goods in trade. When he ate out and it was his turn to pay.. he threw the bills at the cashier as if paying was really not a privilege but a duty.
Then the software companies started making everyone buy a license. The freeloading group stands stuck in time. It costs a lot of money to design tools for computers and the prolific users that work for companies should pay for its use. There is no free lunch... everyone should have to pay. If you want the latest Adobe Photoshop you can even rent it for 19.95 a month. Why? because the freeloader culture needs to pay its fair share.
It gets down to the lowest level. The waiter the serves you your food. You know there is no living wages coming from the restaurant. Its our duty not to freeload on the cost of service.
Six retired men teachers had breakfast last Thursday morning. The breakfast that most of us got was 3.99, plus a 1.95 for a beverage. The waffle house 2 eggs ham, hashbrowns and toast or biscuits and gravy. The tip that was left collectively was 3 dollars in one dollar bills on the table.... I could not believe it. Granted some put their tip on the credit card they used to pay for their breakfast.... but 6 for 3 dollar tip... its part of a culture that doesn't pay any more than they have to... even when it doesn't make sense. We all had separate tags and multiple coffee refills.
My daughters that have worked in restaurants never let me leave that table with less than 20% tip. I think that is a good starting point.
We as a people need to stop thinking in a free food freeloading mindset. There are really people out there that depend on the little extras that we all can afford. It seems that the people that can least afford it give the most.
Is the freeloader culture the natural progression of what we call youthful entitlement?(by which we all hate).
It probably should not be strange to me that when it came to politics, the same thing was true in his philosophy. He did not want the government to do anything except defend him militarily. They should not collect the taxes to pay for schools for his kids or provide for the support of old people through social security. Certainly we don't need to buy health insurance, as a part of the freeloading culture thinks, this is what is coming to me for my awesome contributions to society. I deserve to get this for free and not pay for it.... someone else will cover me. If you make me pay for what I need, you take away my freeeeeeedom. On the other side this group always wants private enterprise to control the market place. If you need a surgery... pay for it yourself sucker... or get out of the way.
When it came to software, this person was first in line for a "free" copy of what the rest of the group bought. When software became expensive and the rest of the group decided to buy it in shares... this person decided not to buy it at all...and then when he had to buy in, it was by goods in trade. When he ate out and it was his turn to pay.. he threw the bills at the cashier as if paying was really not a privilege but a duty.
Then the software companies started making everyone buy a license. The freeloading group stands stuck in time. It costs a lot of money to design tools for computers and the prolific users that work for companies should pay for its use. There is no free lunch... everyone should have to pay. If you want the latest Adobe Photoshop you can even rent it for 19.95 a month. Why? because the freeloader culture needs to pay its fair share.
It gets down to the lowest level. The waiter the serves you your food. You know there is no living wages coming from the restaurant. Its our duty not to freeload on the cost of service.
Six retired men teachers had breakfast last Thursday morning. The breakfast that most of us got was 3.99, plus a 1.95 for a beverage. The waffle house 2 eggs ham, hashbrowns and toast or biscuits and gravy. The tip that was left collectively was 3 dollars in one dollar bills on the table.... I could not believe it. Granted some put their tip on the credit card they used to pay for their breakfast.... but 6 for 3 dollar tip... its part of a culture that doesn't pay any more than they have to... even when it doesn't make sense. We all had separate tags and multiple coffee refills.
My daughters that have worked in restaurants never let me leave that table with less than 20% tip. I think that is a good starting point.
We as a people need to stop thinking in a free food freeloading mindset. There are really people out there that depend on the little extras that we all can afford. It seems that the people that can least afford it give the most.
Is the freeloader culture the natural progression of what we call youthful entitlement?(by which we all hate).
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
From the President
This was reported by Politico as part of the President's speech.
PRESIDENT OBAMA , at a naturalization ceremony for active-duty military members, in the East Room this a.m.: "Looking back, it was an act of extraordinary audacity -- a few dozen delegates, in that hall in Philadelphia, daring to defy the mightiest empire in the world ... Two hundred and thirty-six years later, we marvel at America's story. From a string of 13 colonies to 50 states ... From a fragile experiment in democracy to a beacon of freedom that still lights the world . From a society of farmers and merchants to the largest, most dynamic economy in the world. From a ragtag army of militias and regulars to you -- the finest military that the world has ever known. From a population of some 3 million -- free and slave -- to more than 300 million Americans of every color and every creed."
PRESIDENT OBAMA , at a naturalization ceremony for active-duty military members, in the East Room this a.m.: "Looking back, it was an act of extraordinary audacity -- a few dozen delegates, in that hall in Philadelphia, daring to defy the mightiest empire in the world ... Two hundred and thirty-six years later, we marvel at America's story. From a string of 13 colonies to 50 states ... From a fragile experiment in democracy to a beacon of freedom that still lights the world . From a society of farmers and merchants to the largest, most dynamic economy in the world. From a ragtag army of militias and regulars to you -- the finest military that the world has ever known. From a population of some 3 million -- free and slave -- to more than 300 million Americans of every color and every creed."
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