History as told by...

Saturday was busy because David is a typical Englishman with ants in his pants. Not happy unless touring about. All to my benefit, as I'd be a homebody if left to my devices.

We started at the Ulster Folk Museum, which is a bit like Williamsburg, then Project 24 (the containers in Bangor), then in the evening we went to the Conway Steet Mill.

Here's a cottage from the folk museum.

And a sampler, included as an homage to my mother, who has made many a beautiful sampler:

What struck me about the folk museum was its selective view of history. The Scottish Presbyterians it celebrated--their forge, weaving looms, flax mill--and their pious industriousness ignored that the land they settled was confiscated from the Irish. No mention at all of the provenance of that land. The young man in the sweet shop said "This was originally the Cultra estate," which it wasn't, originally.

I haven't been to Williamsburg's historic village in a very long time, so I don't know if it looks at the settlement in the broader light, looking at history's losers as well as it's winners. Ulster's tensions between its native sons and its settlers is a casebook lesson in why colonialists did better by removing the natives to reservations and/or employing genocide. When we visited St. Croix, we learned that the Dutch slaughtered the native people and imported African slaves, figuring that people could not be enslaved on land they once reigned over.
4/5