Worst Indiana Book Ever

There it is, sitting on my desk, where it has been for about a month, right there on top of a growing pile of papers I never seem to get filed away.  It's mocking me.   I've been trying to decide what do about it.   If I do anything at all  I will hurt someone's feelings and I really hate doing that. The thing has given me, and several of my friends some laughs, so maybe I should just let it go.  It is quite probably the worlds worst written book on Indiana History.   

It is so poorly written that, at first, I wondered if it could have been written as a prank, ha ha ha the joke is on anyone who spent $18.00 to order it and the author is laughing all the way to the bank.  

It was never my intention to write book reviews here, but this book is so bad that I felt obligated to shout a warning to other unsuspecting readers of Indiana History who might be fooled by the book's cover.   

First, let me assure everyone that I've made plenty of writing faux pas, including spelling, and grammar and I would never try to pass myself off an expert in English Grammar. I do, however, know a little something about history and the grammatical errors in this book are things most of us learned to avoid in elementary and junior high school.    The book is "Indiana History, The Crossroads of America" by C.C. Straub.  

The author wrote, on what I believe is commonly called the Forward,  "This is a work of nonfiction. The events are real according to the author." and on another page called "Gratitudes" she writes "Historical Societies are help in their way of information wherever they are located." 

 The book is "richly illustrated".  Normally that would be a good thing, but in this case, not so much.   The author clearly does not understand that image files of a tiny size taken from the internet are very often too small to be used for print purposes.  Some were so small that the resulting print image was unrecognizable.   Illustrations on a page that have nothing to do with the text of the page or even of the chapter add little.  It would seem that in this case they are only included to take up space.   Sometimes the image fit the text, but frequently it did not.  It appears that if the author could not find an appropriate image for a page that the default choice was either a squirrel, a deer, or an elk.  

A summary some of the items that left me shaking my head from chapter 4 is as good as any other chapter for pointing out the reasons Ms. Straub might want to invest in hiring a good editor before she writes another book.  In chapter 4 we learn that the Mississippian culture was "hightly" developed. We also learn that the author failed to use or pay attention to "spell check" which would have spotted "Missisxippians".   The following sentence leaves the reader wondering if it is simply the result of poor grammar or if the author really does believe that "you cross the Falls of the Ohio and the Wabash River near Vincennes".   

Illustrations in chapter 4 have little or no direct connection to the surrounding text.  They included a bison, two bears, nine persons identified only as modern Cherokee people, the seal of the United States Supreme Court, portrait of Christopher Columbus, an unidentified stained glass window, The Great Seal of the United States, misidentified as the flag of the United States, portrait of George Washington "around in the 1700's" 

Odd choices for illustrations don't end with Chapter 4.  In the chapter concerning the French period in Indiana is a photo of "Wild Bill Cody and Sitting Bull".  In the chapter concerning the British control of the area is a photo of "Young Thomas Edison",  two additional images of Christopher Columbus, and one of "Benjamin Franklin, a great inventor of the past".  

Lest you are left, dear reader, with the impression that the above examples were the exception rather than the rule I can only say that spelling and or grammar errors can be found on nearly every page. Oddly hyphenated pairs of words and the misuse of quotation marks were so frequent that I finally had to read up on the subject to make sure I had not forgotten some basic rule of grammar.  Sadly I had not.  Reading this book has had one very positive result.  As bad as they are, I feel much better about my own writing skills. I want to also note that I feel lucky not to have purchased this book myself. It was loaned to me by an unlucky friend.  

    The above image illustrates what happens when you try to convert a very small size image file from the internet to print form.  

  

Remind me again, why anyone thought it was a great idea to have a businessman as the political leader of our nation?  That was it, wasn't it...it's what everyone was saying, he'll be great, he knows how to run a business therefore he will know how to run a government.  I also heard....he's rich, therefore he's successful,  and because he's good at being successful he'll know how to get the best deals for America.  Finally there was this gem, he's rich, and therefore he won't be able to be bought by special interests.

If what we have seen so far has not yet convinced you that the above arguments have more holes in them than a block of swiss cheese then I don't suppose my thoughts are going to sway your views. That said, let me rehash some of the most glaring problems with those arguments.

First, I don't think anyone gave any real thought to the idea that there are different types of business leaders because there are a lot of different types of businesses and the experiences those industry titans acquire and then put to use running various sorts of business enterprises are not necessarily interchangeable from business to business.   For example, business entrepreneurs who run their own business or company have no one else to answer to.  They do what they want, say what they want, they sink or swim based on their own actions.   The skills required to run your own show are not the same as the skills and responsibilities of the CEO of a large corporation.  That businessman has lots of others he answers to, especially a board of directors and shareholders of the company. None of the companies Mr. Trump has run required him to answer to anyone but himself. He has not ever known the responsibility and the give and take required of a CEO who has to work with a board of directors or to worry about shareholders.

Next there is the question of Mr Trump's wealth and the idea that because he is mega wealthy we should all assume he will be a great President.   The first and most obvious problem here is that we don't really have a good understanding of just what his wealth amounts to or how he got it.    We can guess, we can assume, but really we don't know if he is worth millions or billions and he clearly doesn't want to share that information with the rest of the country.  

Running a business is NOTHING like being President.  If you run a business you are not obligated to listen to anyone else, you can do your own thing, all the time, every day.  You don't have two other branches of your business telling you "no, you can't do that!' That is especially true of a private business which has no board of directors or share holders to answer to.  Donald Trump has never run a business where he had to answer to anyone other than his own inner voices.  No share holders, no board of directors....just him, so it's probably been a big shock to realize he doesn't always get the last word in his new job.

Successful, he's been magnificently successful they said....but did anyone stop and consider the obvious...a successful football player is not necessarily a successful baseball player, or ball room dancer, or doctor.  If you dentist was a great dentist who had built a large and successful dental clinic and had hundreds of patients who adored him would you then assume he'd be the guy who should do your orthopedic knee replacement?  Of course you wouldn't....so why on earth would you think that being a successful business tycoon translate to a great President?    

Will he make America great again?  That remains a question but I'm not hopeful....

What this Country Needs

We need to find some definitions that we can all agree on.  It is no wonder we can't solve problems in this country.  We can't even agree on what the problems are.  We all look at things from a different angle, some of us wearing rose colored glasses, others wearing magnifying glasses, and some wearing bifocals. Worse yet we can't even agree on simple definitions.  

For example, there is a lot of talk about the demise of the middle class in America.  But what is "middle class"?  Depending on what the definition of middle class happens to be I recently discovered that I am either poor, wealthy, right in the middle of middle class, or something even less descriptive called "thriving" which is, I suppose, something that is supposed to be good.  

Various academics and economists have argued that middle class should be defined by income,  others say consumption is a better yard stick, or wealth, or demographics or aspirations.  I fall at completely different places on each of those yardsticks.   So if we can't even agree on the definition of middle class, how can we know if we have a problem or know how to solve the problem if we have one?  I don't even know if I'm middle class or something else.  If I'm not middle class am I wealthy?  It most often doesn't feel that way, but some yardsticks say I am.  I guess it goes back to perspective, and if perspective is what makes the difference then I don't see a simple solution to the problem....or even if there is a problem.   

Maybe the definition of Middle Class is like the definition of hard core pornography, we can't easily define it, but like Justice Potter Stewart famously said in his 1964 opinion in Jacobellis v Ohio,  "I know it when I see it".  

For the record, I do see the demise of the middle class as a problem.  Regardless of how you define middle class when you remove a person from the middle he has to go somewhere else, either on the poorer side or the wealthier side of middle. Actually it isn't the person who moves, it is his money.  For the last 20 or 30 years more who might have once been considered middle class have moved toward the poorer side of the middle. At the same time vast amounts of wealth has flowed out of the middle toward the wealthy at much higher rates than wealth has moved the other direction.  Like Potter Stewart, I may not be able to describe all the ways this is bad for our country, but still, I know it's not a good thing. There are just some things that you know without the need for deep and involved definition. Our economy is like an engine, and just like an engine, when things get out of balance bad things almost always result.     

ACROSS AMERICA

I Like to travel, in fact you could say I love to travel. The destination isn’t particularly important to me. Granted, I do have some preferred destinations, but my enjoyment derives as much from “the trip” as the final destination. I like driving. Aside from the physical aspect of “driving” my car, thrill of discovery is invigorating and I have learned that little discoveries are just as rewarding as big ones.

During the summer of 2008 Camilla and I put about 5000 miles under the wheels of our 11 year old car. Along with our grandson Cole we explored a lengthy swath of the Heartland…from Indiana we crossed the prairie state of Illinois, pausing at the Mississippi then onward through Iowa, and Nebraska. Through Nebraska we followed the general route of the Oregon Trail trying to imagine what those crossing the great plains in 1849 must have seen and felt.

This would be the place to pause for a brief editorial. Where we crossed the Prairie state of Illinois there was little evidence of the lush tall grass prairies that once extended from the Wabash River bottoms of western Indiana to the Mississippi and beyond. Where emigrants of 1849 crossed a vast grassland beyond the Mississippi that extended all the way to the Rocky Mountains there is little evidence of that once treeless landscape.  Nebraska is today less of a treeless landscape than it was when I passed through in 1959 as a child with my Grandparents. Today one has to drive well into western Nebraska before the trees fade away.

There is a lot of talk about the homogenization of American Culture over the past couple of generations. Most of that talk applies to things like national retail and restaurant chains. A shopping mall in Boise looks much like a shopping mall in Baton Rouge or Boston.  From what I have seen it should also apply to what we have done to our landscape. In our drive across Nebraska there was barely any difference in the amount of timber we saw between western Indiana where I live and the eastern 2/3 of Nebraska. Yet I remembered a Nebraska with considerably fewer trees than a typical Indiana landscape. I wonder if my memory is faulty? I might have been only about 10 the last time I crossed that state but I don’t remember it looking so much like home. I’m fairly certain emigrant travelers of 1849 would not have recognized much of the landscape we found in Nebraska this summer. Perhaps there are places in Nebraska that have not become so homogenized, but we did not see many of them on this trip.

As amazing as it sounds, there are a few places where you can still see traces of the old Oregon Trail. Scars, yet unhealed, in the land caused by thousands of iron clad wooden wagon wheels. Another small example of ways in which we have put our mark upon this land. 

Chimney Rock, Scotts Bluff, Windlass Hill, and Ash Hollow  are still easily spotted landmarks along the old Oregon Trail and the Platte River which much of the trail followed through Nebraska still winds it's way toward the sea as it did when the first settlers headed west in 1849. Although echos and reminders remain, the Great Plains have been long tamed. Fenced, plowed, and grazed and populated by towns large and small.  The vast grassland full of millions of bison are but a memory today, something we can only read about and imagine.

This is the history of America, we have changed the landscape from coast to coast, we have taken vast wealth from the lands with little thought of the future.  There are still public lands, and still wild places and some of those we have preserved, but it is always a fight and often preservation does not win.  Not long before he left office President Obama granted National Monument status to some public lands in Utah,  Bears Ears National Monument.  Mining, drilling and cattle interests are hopping mad and hope that the current administration will reverse that Monument status which would allow them access to take yet more wealth from those lands and forever change the landscape there as we have allowed in so many other places.  I hope those who value what we leave our grandchildren will prevail in the fight that is sure to come to Bears Ears National Monument in the near future.         

The Mail Order Bride

I recently encountered an interesting family history story concerning Martha Ann Goss (1832-1895).   She is not an ancestor of mine, but was the mother of Malinda Barton (1852-1918) who married one of my great grand uncles, William Robinson.  I had always wondered how William Robinson came to know Malinda Barton and what had brought her to Tippecanoe County from Georgia but I do not normally do deep research into those families that marry into my own families and so I had never looked into the Barton family beyond knowing that Malinda Barton was born in Georgia and the "facts" of her life after she married into the Robinson family.  When all you look at are the "facts" you can easily miss some great stories, and that was certainly the case with Malinda Barton Robinson.

History is really nothing more than a series of stories from the past, usually arranged in chronological order.  Some are more meaningful or important than others and some are more interesting than others.  Family history is essentially the same thing except the stories are more directly connected to our own past.  In the days before written language history, including family history,  was passed by word of mouth from generation to generation.  Often today family history is still passed from one generation to the next in the same way...word of mouth, from parent or grandparent to child. The problem with passing information by word of mouth from one generation to the next, is that by the time it has passed through two or three generations a story told might have little in common with the story as it was first told.  Memories fade, stories become twisted, embellishments happen, critical details are left out. That seems to be the case with some of the remembered stories passed along to descendants of William and Malinda Robinson.

One of William's descendants once asked me what I knew about part of the family having Native American roots. It was something she had heard from a family member many years before.    I had never heard that and told her I doubted it was true. Certainly there was nothing in the Robinson family that would have pointed in that direction. More on that question below.  

Recently a descendant of Malinda Barton's brother contacted me and asked if I had a photo of Malinda, which I did, and which I shared with him.  I also asked him if he had any idea what had brought the Bartons to Tippecanoe County and learned the same question had been on his mind.  That prompted me to take a closer look at the Barton family and to again ponder what had brought them to Tippecanoe County.   What soon became clear was that Malinda's family were war refugees.  Martha Ann Goss was married to John Wesley Barton in Cass County Georgia in 1848.  I found that John was a small farmer, owning no land or slaves according to both the 1850 and 1860 census returns.  By 1860 John and Martha had six children, another son was born in 1861 about the time John enlisted in Company K, 18th Georgia Infantry Regiment along with many of his neighbors. 

John Barton is believed to have died during the second day of fighting at the Battle of Gettysburg, July 1863.   His name appeared in an Atlanta paper as a casualty soon after. 

Cass county, renamed Bartow County in 1861,  was profoundly affected by the Civil War, setting it back economically for many decades. During the War Bartow County was occupied by William Tecumseh Sherman in May, 1864 during the Atlanta Campaign. While no major battles occurred in the county a number of minor ones did and a major one would have happened if corps commander John Bell Hood had not been concerned about reports coming into his headquarters of Yankees to his rear at Cassville. 

After the Atlanta Campaign but before the March to the Sea, Hood again returned to Bartow County, this time as commander of the Army of Georgia. Sherman was effectively using the Western and Atlantic Railroad to supply his troops from the railhead in Chattanooga, Tennessee and fattening his cattle in Bartow County's fields before moving them south to feed his troops. Hood's men, ill-fed and poorly supplied could use the stores in the warehouses so the commander sent Samuel French to fill Allatoona Pass and deplete the stores near the Allatoona Depot. 

In the Battle of Allatoona Pass, the largest battle to occur in Bartow County, French surrounded federal general John Corse in a star fort overlooking the pass but was forced to retreat when he received reports of a significant Union force approaching. This was backed up by a communication from Sherman to Corse intercepted by French that Sherman was "near" although Sherman never left his Kennesaw Mountain stronghold. 

To ensure that Georgia did not have the means to rebuild, as Sherman left for Savannah he removed the railroad track from Dalton to Allatoona Pass and destroyed the track south of Allatoona Pass by having his men twist them into Sherman's Neckties. His last communication with the north occurred in Cartersville on November 12, 1864 and Sherman destroyed Cassville (Bartow County seat at the time) and portions of Kingston and Carterville. As a result the winter of 1864-65 was one of the hardest for Bartow's citizens and saw many citizens leave. In 1867 the county decided to move the county seat to Cartersville. 

It's impossible to know exactly what was happening to the Barton family during the war. It couldn't have been good and the outlook for a widow such as Martha, with children, was grim.    It is possible that Martha and her children  remained on the same ground she and her husband had been working prior to the war.  She might have moved in with relatives, or she might have fled the immediate area to someplace where she felt safer.   

What we do know about Martha is that on 27 October 1865 Martha was married to Johnson Graves in Tippecanoe County Indiana.  Now this was a puzzle.  She had no known relatives living in Tippecanoe County at the time, at least  nothing obvious appeared in searches of local census records and Johnson Graves had no apparent connections with Georgia.   Still I felt certain that her arrival in Tippecanoe County was not random, she would have had many other options if all she was seeking was a safer place.  

I thought there had to be some specific reason Martha and her seven children ended up in Tippecanoe County rather than any other place.   I wondered if perhaps some local relief organization might have been working to bring war refugees to safer locations so I asked someone who has studied the Civil War and that era in much greater depth than I.  I asked if there were any relief organizations that he knew of doing such work.   His response was both surprising and enlightening.  In short he explained that there were some organizations around the country during and after the war that helped war refugees, some small church groups and right after the war the U.S. Christian Commission, but they usually raised money for food, clothing, medical needs and blankets, not relocation.  He posited that she was quite likely a "mail order bride".  A widow such as her, with children, in a destroyed Georgia had little prospects beyond begging for food from the occupying Federal forces.  It was common to see women her age marrying men who were 20, 30, or even 40 years their senior. It was the only way to ensure their survival and the well being of their children.  They would contract an "agent" who would then place adds in papers all around the West and Midwest and the suiter would pay the Agent's fees and the travel expenses for the widow and her children. 

In the end there is no way to verify if she was a mail order bride, but the circumstantial evidence seems pretty strong.  In researching the life and times of Martha Goss Barton I uncovered one other interesting fact that goes back to the question from one of William Robinson's descendants about Native American roots.  Based on prior research done by others in the Barton family Martha Goss's mother was most likely a Cherokee Indian.  While I did not attempt to dig deeper into that question the family legend had certainly been passed along by at least some of the Grandchildren of William Robinson.  





  

Silence is Golden

Under the heading of "More of What This Country Needs" I would add the idea that we need more silence.  The hum of "civilization" is no longer a hum.   Instead it's become a long and painfully loud crescendo with no end in sight. It's gotten to the point where we can't hear ourselves think. In a sense we have lost ourselves in the din.

 The hum of civilization isn't just that which we can measure in decibels, it's also those other things that compete for our attention from the time we open our eyes in the morning until we shut them at night.  We are under a constant barrage of competing things wanting our attention. We rush from place to place and from thing to thing.  It's like being pecked to death by chickens.  Alarm clocks, family, jobs, friends, Facebook updates, email, Television, smart phones, music, ...those are some of the obvious things screaming for our attention. Politics is another source of unpleasant noise, especially this year.

It's easy to lose yourself among all those things competing for your attention. We are seldom left alone to just think, daydream, and figure out who we are and how we fit into this whole creation.  It requires some silence to think about big things like "What is the meaning of life?", "What is the meaning of my life?" or "What gives my life meaning?" 

The silence we need is more than simply the lack of noise. It is also the silence of not letting a thousand thoughts compete in your mind.  I've experienced "silence" while being surrounded by noise.   Driving a tractor, plowing corn in the middle of an 80 acre field for example.  On the tractor, in the field but miles from there too. You might call it zoning out...but not in the sense that I started plowing out rows of corn...more like my mind was just open and thoughts flowing without much exterior distraction.  In a way the noise actually sort of helped with that process.

Sitting on the porch swing with my grandmother on a warm summer afternoon was another kind of silence. She was talking, I was listening, sometimes asking questions, but it was a quiet sitting, quiet talking, non interrupted talking and listening.  I remember sometimes hearing the sound of a car moving down the road in front of the house...gravel crunching under the tires.  You could see the dust rising behind the car before you heard it. But it didn't compete with what was going on.  How different from today.   I like to sleep with open windows whenever I can but we live next to a busy street.  Opening a window today just lets in a more or less constant roar of passing traffic.  Where are all those people going at this time of night?  Eventually you just get numb to the sound and don't really hear it any more...still the same amount of traffic moving down the street, but I've managed to push it far into the background, especially late at night while I'm sitting here at my computer working.

What this country needs is less noise in a lot of places...television needs less noise.  When did we decide news reporting was better when you had two or three panelists talking about the news...all at the same time.  Financial news networks are especially terrible about that sort of thing. Three or four guys sitting around a table debating what's going to happen in the markets or arguing because they don't agree, that's the kind of too much noise I can do without.

We need less noise and more substance from our politicians.  Political debates are not debates...they are junior high school shouting matches, it's pathetic. I've seen enough of those to last me until I die.

I'm thinking it might be a good idea to take up fishing...being out on a boat, away from people, traffic, TV, phones, and all the other trappings of "civilization" sounds pretty good. Just me and the dog.

What do Terry Bradshaw, Glenn Beck, James Carville, Thomas Edison, Howie Mandel and I have in common?

This is, after all, a blog of Random Thoughts and the following is just about as random as I've gotten.  Maybe it should be called rambling thoughts from the heartland because there isn't a strong continuity of subject matter in any of my subjects. From Travel, to photography, to family history and politics.  Holy Cow, this is beginning to sound like the ramblings of someone with ADHD or ADD.  

And there you have it, the lead-in to my thoughts on ADD.  Why? Because I'm probably the poster child for un-diagnosed ADHD as both a child and an adult.  

An interesting article appeared in the Washington Post recently. Written by Valerie Strauss: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/02/07/adhd-in-kids-what-many-parents-and-teachers-dont-understand-but-need-to-know/

Reading through the article dredged up some painful memories of my school days and reminded me of issues that haunted me through much my adult life,  but at the same time the article offered up some positive thoughts on the subject. From Dr. Ned Hallowell, one of the country’s foremost experts on ADHD: "Too often, teachers and parents (and bosses) jump to what I call “the moral diagnosis,” and ascribe the underachievement to lack of effort or laziness, which leads to lectures, punishments, and a gradual infection of the spirit with the viruses of shame and diminished sense of self.  In fact, the correct diagnosis is of a brain difference, not a brain deficit, and certainly not a moral failing."   I can't even begin to count the number of times teachers wrote on my report card "not working up to potential",  implying of course that I was a smart kid who could do a lot better but who instead was goofing off, not working hard enough. None of that was said because they wanted to be unkind. On the contrary.  My teachers wanted me to succeed.   My parents loved me and wanted the best for me.  As an adult, as a parent and grandparent that much is very clear to me now...it wasn't quite so clear 50 years ago.  

My failing to "work up to potential" was probably especially difficult for my father to deal with or to understand.  Dad was what I might call a "natural scholar", he had excelled in school both as a student and athlete. Success in school or athletics evaded me.   Failure was foreign to him and clearly there was a difference between what he expected of his children, based on his own experiences, and how I was performing.  I really feel bad that he had to suffer through that without understanding the problem. I wish we had learned all this years ago, it would have been so much better for both of us.  

I'm not going to go into the symptoms or treatment of ADHA in children but I thought some of the information on Adult ADD was worth talking about.   

Some of the often cited symptoms of Adult ADD or ADHA are: 
Trouble concentrating and staying focused.  
Hyper Focus....oddly the opposite of the first but can also be problematic. 
Disorganization
Subcategories of Disorganization are:   

• poor organizational skills (home, office, desk, or car is extremely messy and cluttered) 
• tendency to procrastinate
• trouble starting and finishing projects
• chronic lateness
• frequently forgetting appointments, commitments, and deadlines
• constantly losing or misplacing things (keys, wallet, phone, documents, bills)
• underestimating the time it will take you to complete tasks

 Oh....crap, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty and guilty!  
These things have haunted me my entire adult life.  My chronic lateness at work became a department joke. My desk, is just about a picture perfect example of poor organizaional skill.   

There are several other typical and often cited symptoms and they are pretty easy to find online if you are interested. The article in the Post did include a bit of good news.   First the problem is much better understood now than it was when I was a child and many studies have been done. Treatments are for the most part successful, books have been written and children suffering this diagnosis are much more likely to be treated today than children were 50 years ago.

In my case, which is the norm for most people, I  learned to compensate for many of the symptoms so that in many ways you probably would never suspect I ever had such a problem. Oddly it seemed to me, I mentioned this to my sister today and she seemed truly surprised that I thought I had ADD, but my wife said she had suspected such a thing for a long time, of course she's lived with me for almost 50 years and has experienced much of this.  My case remains "un-diagnosed" or only self-diagnosed but I may talk my my physician about this on my next visit.   

Dr. Hallowell noted in the article "In fact, what we call ADD (a terrible term, as it is not a deficit of attention but rather a wandering of attention, and it is not a disorder in my opinion but rather a trait; if you manage it properly it can turn you into a phenomenal success, but if you don’t it can ruin your life, which makes it unique and fascinating) is really a type of mind, genetically transmitted, and composed of a wide array of complex and often contradictory tendencies." 

"On the positive side, which people rarely discuss, people with ADD are the people who founded this country.  They tend to be visionaries, dreamers, explorers, inventors (Edison was a classic), path-finders, discoverers, entrepreneurs (almost all entrepreneurs have ADD), creative types, original thinkers, paradigm breakers, trend-setters, free thinkers, as well as being big-hearted, trusting, generous, and fun."

It is a relief to know I am in good company and I'm thankful that I escaped any great lasting harm. Still it did create issues and some pain along the way.  On the other hand it is part of what made me who I am.   It is interesting to know this was genetically transmitted...I wonder where that came from?  I have no doubt believing dad would have thought it didn't come from his side of the family. This was an eye opening read but I found additional good material at  http://www.helpguide.org/home-pages/add-adhd.htm