"Sharp, quirky, and occasionally nettlesome", Walking the Berkshires is my personal blog, an eclectic weaving of human narrative, natural history, and other personal passions with the Berkshire and Litchfield Hills as both its backdrop and point of departure. I am interested in how land and people, past and present manifest in the broader landscape and social fabric of our communities. The opinions I express here are mine alone. Never had ads, never will.
There are moments in life when something happens that only you can fully appreciate, when opportunity seems to have crossed your path because whatever it is, you are the one who was meant to find it. At such times, this is your moment to act, no matter how whimsical the impulse or hard it may be to justify to others. My mother once got a black Labrador puppy that way at a school auction, and it is a good thing the hound latched on to my father afterwards because Dad could not imagine what had possessed her to do it.
For me it began with one of those classic parenting moments when the kids were acting up in the back seat and I pronounced sternly that I was turning the car around and heading home unless they knocked it off. To reenforce my threat I turned right when I otherwise would have turned left and headed past the darkened storefronts of our town in Northwest Connnecticut. As I neared the intersection where I had planned to complete the circle and head back in the direction we had been travelling, my partner noticed something unusual poutside the Stateline Auction House and commented; "There's a statue of a beefeater over there." I practically made a U Turn in the intersection. I knew at once what it was. There couldn't be two of them.
Sure enough, it was a carved and painted wooden statue, in the cigar store indian style, of a Yeoman of the tower guard, complete with all the regalia from his halberd to his knee garters. It was cold and dark, so she couldn't give it a thorough inspection, but I was convinced it was the very same statue that had once stood in front of Maggiacomo's liquor store in my hometown, Millbrook NY. And so it turned out to be.
The beefeater was carved in 1976 by artist Peter Wing, who still lives in the area where I grew up. He arrived in Millbrook in 1969 after serving in Viet Nam. Around the time of the bicentennial, Millbrook had at least six of his carved creations in front of various stores. A beefeater was an appropriate choice for the liquor store, and John Kading's Corner News sported a classic cigar store indian. There was a clothing store called The Haberdasher which had a mustachioed gent all in black with a top hat, and the ice cream parlor Jamo's had a victorian beauty, complete with bustle, wearing a dress the color of black raspberry. The deli had some sort of a dwarfish figure rather like a punch and Judy puppet that was straddling a barrel, and the Millbrook Diner had a magnificent ship's figurehead.
Within a few years, some of the stores had closed and the statues went with them. The Diner's figurehead was so weathered that several years ago it was removed and a new one created (though not by Wing) as part of the renovation. I often wondered what became of the other pieces, and never expected to see one of them again, let alone have the opportunity to own it.
But now here it was in all its glory, and from the looks of it it was in remarkably fine shape. Wherever its journey had taken it since it left the liquor store, this beefeater had not been exposed to the elements. I decided that if it could be had for a price that would not ruin me, I would go to the auction and win it.
It turned out that this piece had already been up for auction but had not met its minimum and was not scheduled to be a lot in the next auction either. I asked whether I could know the minimum bid and the woman I spoke with said she thought the auctioneer might be willing to sell it to me for whatever it was.
When she called me back I had already determined the maximum amount I was willing to pay for this extravagant recapturing of a piece of my childhood. I figured that either the minimum bid was much too high, or that maybe it just didn't attract enough interest from local buyers who lacked the association with the piece that I did. Or maybe they had nowhere to put the thing. I prepared myself to be disappointed.
And much to my surprise, the number they gave was less than I feared, and very likely les that it would be worth to the right collector. Today I picked it up, and they tossed in the wooden pedestal they had displayed it with that had just the right colors and came form an old mill in Ansonia, CT. I learned that the auction house had acquired it from an estate sale in Millerton, NY, about midway between here and where it all started in Millbrook. Then I drove it home.
Now there is a cigar store beefeater in my living room, and someday soon I'll contact Peter and let him know that one of his creations has found the right home.
Haverford College was a special place for me, and I continue to feel its influence in my life nearly a quarter century since graduation. Its Quaker foundations were self evident without being overbearing, more the medium for the culture of a flourishing community than a rigid behavioral directive.
Among its notable attributes was a self enforcing honor code, a commitment to consensus, and an obligation to dialogue. The latter proved a challenging concept, for to do it well meant to be open to new insight gained through engagement, while also confronting difficult issues and relationships with clear-eyed candor.
Some of my classmates were predisposed toward confrontation rather than dialogue, and more at home speaking truth to power instead of listening and reflecting closely. Others became paralyzed by self reflection, unable to navigate the existential crisis that often attends a dawning awareness of complicity in systems of power and privilege. I tried to find the center of these extremes, though not always successfully, and not always risking the more uncomfortable, but perhaps more candid approach.
Since my time at Haverford, I have grappled with the implications of the words of Abraham Joshua Heschel;
"...indifference to evil is worse than evil itself...in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible."
I come at this from the perspective of one who prefers - in fact, who has found it professionally quite useful - to find common ground with those who may hold other values quite different from my own. There are readers of this blog who share my love of history but not my politics. There are friends of mine in the reenacting community whose company I greatly enjoy, but who hold certain beliefs and share things on Facebook that make me cringe: statements with which I have no wish to be associated.
Social media, and Facebook in particular, offer the quick and the simple over the thoughtful and nuanced. It is not a forum for serious and searching debate. It wants to sort and group us (and market to us based on those associations). It rewards our every utterance with "Likes" from a collective of "friends" who in aggregate may have very few points of common interest or continuity in our lives. In fact, I suspect that having all of my Facebook Friends get together for a social function might prove less successful than just asking 400 random people to drop by for food and conversation and letting the chips fall as they invariably may.
On the other hand, having a dozen of my reenacting friends who did not previously know each other come down the shore for a weekend of sun and discovery together last year worked far better. People made connections and found they shared interests beyond this hobby, and our conversations did not devolve to spurious quotes, political rants, or occasionally tone deaf humor, as tends to happen with social media.
This is understandable. People behave differently when the conventions of courtesy and hospitality apply to social interaction. We do not wipe our muddy feet on our host's carpet, but what gets posted on one wall ends up in a friend's feed, and sometimes it has a similar effect.
Walt Whitman was comfortable with his own shifting viewpoints; "Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes." I think the obligation to dialogue that I learned at Haverford requires conviction leavened by humility. There are a few absolutes that for me remain immutable. Cross those lines and I risk "indifference to evil". Beyond that, though, there are many, many, many ways to approach ideas that challenge my own and make me uncomfortable. It doesn't work so well when I am defensive, or tired, or lack the time to give a thoughtful and considered reaction. Sometimes I have to sit with that feeling and puzzle it out.
I was raised by two loving parents who are staunchly non violent. I love living history and reenact Revolutionary War battles. It does not follow that I support the NRA, or vote 100% for one party over another, or even understand the Constitution and our Founding generation the way that others may. There are not enough data points in this sample for someone to make those assumptions about me, and I try to accord others the same courtesy.
I am reaching the point, however, where I am no longer willing just to ignore or block the tone and content of what sometimes gets shared on Facebook about 2nd amendment rights. I add things up differently, and for me nothing trumps 20 murdered first graders and six fine educators, each killed by multiple rounds fired from a legally obtained semi automatic rifle.
The Constitution has been amended 27 times precisely because times change and the Founders, however wise and farsighted, were not omniscient. I see a need today to reconcile an individual's right to bear arms with the need for reasonable and prudent safeguards to apply to legal gun ownership.
If that ends up meaning that as a result of new legislation, I require a firearms permit for my replica antique flintlock, and some sort of firearms safety training, and even a background check, before I take the field to play at war with my friends, I am willing to abide by those conditions if it means our children and grandchildren are safer at school. I do not believe that if we give an inch on gun safety laws we will lose our right to bear arms, but I do believe we cannot replace the lives of those children, and too many others, who are killed in gun violence every day in this country.
I find I still have an obligation to dialogue on this and other difficult, challenging issues - respectful, direct, courageous and sincere dialogue. Facebook is not the place for that, and it probably won't happen in the comments to this blog post either. The next time you and I get together, though, around a campfire or across the dinner table, we can talk about this stuff. We have to. I promise to listen to you and consider your words carefully. I hope despite what differences may remain, that we continue to hold each other in respect and will remain friends,in the truest sense of that word.
(photo at left courtesy of Brandywine Creek State Park. Other photos by Tim Abbott or Talya Leodari)
Last weekend was the 235th Anniversary of the Battle of Brandywine, a key engagement in the American Revolution that took place in 1777 during the Philadelphia Campaign. Talya and I along several hundred reenactors gathered at Brandywine Creek State Park in Wilmington, Delaware to commemorate it with a living history encampment.
The host unit for this event was the 2nd Virginia Regiment, known in our hobby as valuing serious research and for setting the bar very high for authenticity. In coordination with the site, they arranged for both the Crown and Continental forces to have access to wood for constructing brush shelters, and excavated field kitchens for those who wished to prepare their meals as the soldiers we depict often did.
Reenacting culture varies from unit to unit in our hobby, and not everyone wishes to sleep rough and do a minimal, "campaigner" impression. This was an opportunity to demonstrate both to the public and to our fellow reenactors the techniques used to create and utilize these 18th century amenities. I had determined months ago that I would take full advantage of these options, and encouraged any in our regiment who wanted to help set up a brush arbor or dig a firebox and maintain an authentic camp kitchen to join me in that effort.
A brush arbor is a temporary structure designed to provide shade to a small group of soldiers who historically would not have had the benefit of the large, canvas awning flies that are prevalent in Revolutionary War reenacting but which belong to a later era. It consists of a number of pole saplings cut and trimmed and set in holes int he ground as uprights. To these are added additional poles as roof beams and supports, upon which are piled cut branches and vegetation to provide the shade.
I had prior experience erecting a small, emergency arbor at an August reenactment where temperatures
reached the high 90s, but looked forward to making something more substantial at this event. To aid me I had my fascine knife and the assistance of fellow 1st NJ members Jeff Cox and Bob Boer. Jeff brought along a modern ax but we largely used the fascine knife to cut and trim the poles and branches we needed. There was a post hole digger available as well which proved a Godsend, because we soon learned we needed to sink the uprights at least 18 inches into the ground for them to be stable and secure. I suppose the 18th century way would have been to dig out a much larger post hole with a mattock ir pick which we did not have. We also learned that using dead wood for a long, diagonal rafter without a central support would place too much stress on the weight bearing wood, and our arbor came down inside its frame later on Friday night. Saturday morning, though, we had the kinks worked out of the design, and the result became a focal point for many reenactors and the public as they entered our encampment.
Next to the brush arbor was our field kitchen, which consisted of a 2' deep circular trench about 16' in diameter with the excavated earth piled in the center. We were to dig our own fireboxes into the side of the trench, about 1' square and 1.5' deep about 4" below grade. Above this, we cleared a flat shelf and dug a 4" shaft about 11" back from the inner wall of the trench connecting to the firebox. It was over this hole that we were to cook our food.
Jeff and I dug out the firebox, taking our queue from one that had already be placed around the circle. The idea was that up to 12 6-man messes could cook at this location, using less fuel than an open cooking fire and more easily supervised by their officers. We should have started our firebox higher up from the floor of the trench than we did, and closer to grade level, becasue we found that we needed a hotter fire to cook our food. We also found that
smaller diameter twigs and pieces of wood worked best in the fire box, which was rather smokey. Noentheless, both we and our comrade John Funk cooked several meals in this manner, including a brisket and two large dutch ovens filled with chicken cordon bleu, which if not strictly an authentic soldier recipe was damned fine eating.
In addition to these two creations, there were other aspects of this event that provided added opportunities to demonstrate field fortification techniques, such as the construction of fascines, which were 6' bundles of wood used to reinforce the top of gun emplacements and to provide a degree of cover to exposed troops. There was also an authentic regimental sutler impression near the Continental field kitchen, and a presentation on the roles of black soldiers int he Continental army.
The upshot of all this effort was an event that it created more opportunities to inform the public, engage their curiosity and inspire impromptu living history demonstrations than are customary at reenactments. People were drawn to the unfamiliar fires and the shade of the arbor, and a number of the distaff and camp followers with period skills sat before their kitchen areas weaving baskets and providing additional teaching moments.
Some of this activity was spontaneous, and allowed participants to be even more creative with their impressions than is customary. I found it invigorating and am grateful to Todd Post of the 2nd VA, Thaddeus Weaver of the German Regiment, ours hosts the 2nd VA and the management and staff of Brandywine Creek State Park for making it possible for us to do this.
There is but one verified veteran of WWI left alive out of the millions who served in the Great War. She is Florence Green, 110 years old, who in 1918 was an officer's mess steward in the Women's Royal Air Corps. She was recently "rediscovered" as a veteran of the Great War in January, 2010. She is also one of an estimated 300-400 supercentenarians worldwide who are >110 years old. 81 of these have been verified.
Extreme longevity is a rare curiosity. From what I can tell, those who achieve it and are able to articulate their thoughts on the subject tend to be quite astonished that they alone of their generation have survived. The last combat veterans of the War to End all Wars also routinely expressed their frustration that war is still a core human activity. In twenty years when the soldiers of "The Greatest Generation" are winnowed down to the last individuals, I wonder if it will be the same for them.
It is not only the experience of past wars that recedes when there are none that live who remember it. How we remember and understand those times becomes a matter of historiography and storytelling. Our memorials have more to say as artifacts of the society that created them than the events and individuals they commemorate. Whether carved in stone as Je me souviens or repeated by millions at Passover seders, the injunction "never forget" reinforces values and attitudes in the present time . It may or may not reflect the experience,and motivations of those we remember who were social actors in earlier times.
Memories are revisited and revised over a lifetime of reflection. What an eyewitness feels in the moment, the emotions it generates, and how that person responds to these stimuli is highly significant both to social historians as well as to psychologists trying to interpret individual and collective behaviors. I understand the emotion "fear" but not in the way that those in combat may experience it. Those who fight in modern wars with modern sensibilities may respond quite differently from those combatants with the world views of other times and societies. If there is no one left to tell us how it felt at the time, we are left trying to interpret whatever remains in the surviving historical record of what they chose to record.
As a genealogist, I often confront the regret that comes from no longer being able to ask a living relative about details from the past that I must now try to glean from other sources. As a society, there is now only one tangible living link to the Great War, and it is too great an expectation to place on her to be Virgil to our Dante. Our responsibility to the past is both to remember and to revisit those memories, to test our assumptions and gain a deeper understanding about ourselves as well as those who have gone before. Ultimately, for good or ill, the past is what we make of it. So too our destinies.
Ulysses Grant, writng his memoirs in failing health with his finances ruined, recorded his feelings about his former adversaries at the time of Lee's surrender nearly two decades before:
"I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse. I do not question, however, the sincerity of the great mass of those who were opposed to us."
Grant was framing not only the narrative of his life but also the national themes of reunion and reconciliation among former combatants in 1885 that predominated following Reconstruction.
There was, of course, a countervailing regional 'Lost Cause' narrative whose embers still glow today. and others that would not be seriously confronted at the national level until the Civil Rights era. Still, Grant gave expression to a sentiment that had great persistence in Civil War memory for more than a century: one that 20th century reunions of aged veterans who embraced their former foes on the battlefields of their youth only served to strengthen.
Today the great-great-grandsons and granddaughters of those old men, to the degree that they give any thought to the meaning of the Civil War at all, are obviously not informed by direct experience of those times, or even personal contact with those who lived and took part in the events of mid-19th century America. My grandmother told me what her mother told her, and her mother was born in 1874 and so heard it from an earlier generation. We may draw on the powerfully compelling second-hand narrative spun in Ken Burn's PBS documentary, or on agendas that have much more to do with personal politics and identity than with an informed and dispassionate understanding of Civil War history.
We are also in a different place in our national dialogue than our predecessors were even 50 years ago during the Centennial. In some cases we seem to have moved forward, as our discussion at the national level now emphasizes the importance of slavery and African American memory in our interpretation of the causation and significance of this conflict. But there is a notable backlash as well, and not only from unrepentant racists but also among those who feel that personal and collective values of Southern pride and heritage are threatened by accusations that what their ancestors did for the Confederacy was treasonous and in defense of white supremacy.
One hears the same old belief of an affirmative right to secede that Lincoln so compellingly dispelled in his his first inaugural address. Our "bonds of affection" that he urged his fellow countrymen in the South not to break in 1861 make it virtually unthinkable today that a region of the United States would be willing and able to secede from the Union today, but so does our Constitution, which replaced the Articles of Confederation in a deliberate effort to establish a national government that could withstand fragmentation by entrenched sectional interests.
Why is it so important to some of our fellow Americans to defend what their ancestors did in taking up arms in the cause of secession? Why is it so difficult to say today, as Grant did in 1885, that the valor of their Confederate ancestors is beyond dispute, while acknowledging that they did not go to war primarily because of tariffs, or the rights of States to self rule, but first and foremost to preserve and defend a way of life and personal identity sustained by the enslavement of people of color? Why are these two sentiments incompatible?
Pride and shame create a powerful dissonance that warps and distorts memory and prevents us from seeing with clear eyes. We who admire our forebears do not want to be condemned by their actions, and all of us stand on the shoulders of those who came before, no matter how firm the foundation that grounds their feet (sometimes feet of clay). Mussolini may have made the trains run on time, but only the very foolish and irresponsible would march through Little Italy on Columbus Day in black shirts waving the banner of fascism marked with "Heritage not Hate" and claiming it was about nothing but Italian Pride.
There is a difference, though, and an especially significant one, between guilt and responsibility. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel put it best;
"Above all, the prophets remind us of the moral state of a people. Few are guilty, but all are responsible".
We are talking about the responsibility that we the living have to the past and to society - a responsibility that understands the need for honest appraisal of historical evidence as well as causality. I am not guilty for what my ancestors did, but I have a responsibility to understand them as social actors who made choices for good or ill based on what they possessed and what they knew that have consequences extending to our time.
We can, and should appreciate the impact of slavery on the economic and social stratification of the United States throughout its history and in all regions of the country. It does not excuse the actions of those who supported Secession that northern economic interests benefited from slave labor, or that every state in the Union had slavery at the time of the Revolution. It does not make the cause of southern Independence any less about maintaining the institution of slavery that Confederate armies made use of black labor (and eventually a very very small number of blacks under arms). Washington's army at Yorktown, lest we forget, was estimated by a French observer to be fully 25% American American soldiers, not all of whom were free.
I say this in full knowledge that each of us has a core identity that places different emphasis on its various components. Those in the dominant culture, and part of the dominant narrative, may be less inclined to identify first and foremost by region, or ethnicity, or the events of 150 years ago. Those who place religion, or gender, or language, or landscape ahead of other considerations of identity may engage with that narrative quite differently.
At the time of the American Revolution, the various colonies along the eastern seaboard were so geographically and economically isolated from each other that "easterners" from New England considered Pennsylvania part of the south. A strong case could be made that the Continental army was able to draw on soldiers from these disparate regions, though they rarely served all together, because of the unique personal qualities of George Washington, and that otherwise as Ben Franklin so memorably depicted in a political cartoon from the French and Indian War, it was truly a case of "Join or Die".
The Declaration of Independence transformed the fight of the Colonies from armed resistance in defense of their rights as Englishmen to a national struggle for self-determination. The Emancipation Proclamation made the abolition of slavery a central war aim of the Union, but as Lincoln said in 1861 it was always the center of the conflict.
"One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute."
I believe we can honor our ancestors for their admirable qualities and their misdeeds, without needing them to be infallible or blameless. I believe we can look at atrocities and injustices honestly, whether perpetrated by the victors or the vanquished. I believe that we will still be rehashing the causes and justifications for our Civil War and flogging those old dead horses until and unless we put pride and shame aside, and start taking responsibility to give an honest appraisal of the evidence of history and its legacy today.
The venerable History Carnival celebrates its 100th edition this month. It all began as a fortnightly affair back in January, 2005, and carried on that way through the first 50 editions. It then shifted to a monthly schedule in April, 2007 and so it continues to this day.
This state of affairs makes it challenging to apply an appropriate commemorative modifier to History Carnival 100. I suppose one might call it something along the lines of the "Demicentimensiversary Edition", but I'm no fan of the tendency in certain academic circles to invent needless, inelegant jargon instead of communicating in clear and lucid prose. All this manages to accomplish is to problematize structural totalities under the rubric of hegemonic hermeneutics, n'est-ce pas? Damn skippy. History Carnival 100 it is.
Here at Walking the Berkshires, we serve up history the way we like our single malt: neat, with plenty of smoke and peat and a dry lingering tail. Some light agitation helps to bring out all the subtle notes and complexity: less a kick in the jaw than warm oil on the tongue...
Excuse me a moment...Mmmm....Ahhh. Caol Ila, 12 Years Old. Right, well, why not help yourself to the beverage of your choice, and we'll get on with the show!
Alternate History: The Good, the Bad, and the Downright Ignorant
I am extremely fond of counterfactual history when it is done well. So much of the actual history has to be right in order for the fabrication to hold together. There is also the possibility that 2nd order counterfactuals stemming from the first might well bring about the same historical outcome from a different direction. Sometimes, no matter where they begin, all roads must inexorably lead to Rome.
One of the first rules of counterfactual hypothesizing is to make as few changes as possible to the conditions leading up to the alternate reality. We are talking about the lack of horseshoe nails, here, not the gun that won't exist until 2419 - cool as that is - as described by the National Museum of American History Blog.
Speaking of events that may yet come to pass, the question of whether there should be a new monument to Virginia State troops at Antietam is the subject of a fascinating post at Kevin Levin's Civil War Memory. Brian Schoeneman, a candidate for elected office in the Virginia House of Delegates, gamely weighs in at several points during an extensive comment thread - every bit as interesting as the post itself - in support of his campaign pledge to make this happen.
An excellent example of alternate history done right is featured this month at Today in Alternate History, which speculates on what might have been, if only Austria's Archduke Franz Ferdinand had avoided assassination in 1914. Would you believe resurgent Hapsburgs, giving rise by 1930 to a "Triple Monarchy of Austria-Hungary-Slavonia, Turkey, and a docile but resource-rich Romanov Russia under the frail hemophiliac Tsar Alexander IV"?
Certainly that is more believable than some of the self-deceptive mangling of American history perpetrated recently by some of the most prominent faces of the Tea Party movement. I felt compelled to offer these candidates for the highest office in the land a helpful multiple choice quiz on our Revolutionary history, but J. L. Bell of Boston 1775 corrects the record on Sarah Palin's mistatements about the Midnight Rider with far more class and less snark than I could muster. Quoth he;
"So did Palin share a correct and uncommonly knowledgeable interpretation of Revere’s ride? Or was she correct only in the way that a stopped clock is correct if you look at it in exactly the right way and ignore it a second later? That argument might have raged forever, but then someone came along and made it impossible to maintain that Palin enjoys a detailed, accurate understanding of the start of the Revolutionary War. That person was Sarah Palin."
"...in his Houston speech to the Republican National Convention, Ronald Reagan fell for one of the great hoaxes of American history, surpassed in taking people in only by H.L. Mencken`s enchanting fable about Millard Fillmore’s installing the first bathtub in the White House,” Schlesinger wrote. “The author of the less than immortal words Lincoln never said was an ex-clergyman from Erie, Pa., named William J.H. Boetcker.”
Airminded examines British media claims during WWII that RAF precision bombing in reprisal for the Blitz was morally and technically superior to indiscriminate Luftwaffe bombing, and finds them wanting:
"Nearly everything in these articles is, at best, wishful thinking. Bomber Command's aircrew may as well have shed their bombs as aimed them, for all the difference it made: as the Butt Report revealed the following year, only one in four aircraft dropping bombs over Germany did so within five miles of their target point. The intention was 'accurate bombing', but the effect was indiscriminate (when the bombs didn't fall on open countryside, that is, which most of them did)...as things were, it's just not possible that what the RAF was doing to Germany in late 1940 was more effective (in any sense) than what the Luftwaffe was doing to Britain."
Still, for my money, if your history is going to be bad, it might as well be entertaining.
"This is a history that gets overlooked or ignored because of recent debates in the West over garments-as-oppression for other women–you know, Afghani women in burkhas, or other Muslim women covered by the hijab or la voile. As though Western women’s clothing has never been an issue in their citizenship or their feminism!"
And then we have certain minted pneumismatic artifacts of scholarly interest blogged about at Hypervocal. Be forewarned that these may be considered NSFW in some quarters. Are they ancient Roman brothel tokens, or possibly pornographic gaming pieces? At right, a proposed design for a modern token, suitable for use by disgraced US Congressmen in exchange for sexting services, appropriately priced at "sex asses", if I remember my High School Latin.
(I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that certain internet search terms taken out of context from the preceding paragraph are going to single handedly make History Carnival 100 the most heavily visited edition of all time. Just imagine if I had included extended pasages from The Satyricon...)
Blinding Me With Science
It seems appropriate at this point to bring up the subject of censorship. Take, for example, the history of the active suppression of various lines of scientific inquiry. There have been a number of mutually sustaining blog discussions this month on this topic, including one at Christopher M Luna that opines;
"the tendency to label pre-nineteenth century thinkers as scientists created the “possibility of a false impression that science is somehow eternal, separate from the people who practiced it, just waiting to be revealed” and that such an impression could lead to “a problematic faith in progress, a misunderstanding of the scientific method (as though it is static or eternal), and, perhaps most popular these days, a mischaracterization of the interaction between people investigating the natural world and religion."
"The heliocentric hypothesis says that heliocentricity offers a possible model to explain the observed motion of the planets; it says nothing about the truth-value of this model. The heliocentric theory says that the universe is in reality heliocentric. In 1616 the Church banned the heliocentric theory but not the hypothesis. This might at first seem like splitting hairs but in reality it is a very important distinction."
In a similar vein, Jeannie at Tripbaseblog offers her picks for the 8 Most Inspiring American Speeches of All Time and presents their settings as potential history tourism destinations. I confess I would not have thought to include Swami Vivekananda in this lineup, but I wouldn't mind a visit to Chicago (when the Cubbies are in town).
Thomas Dixon's The History of Emotion's blog delves into emotional animals in history and offers up a 1705 account of a weeping horse in Augsberg. I'll see your horse and raise you a Beagle - Schultz's, not Darwin's.
Reading and Misreading
Sandusky Library/Follett House Museum posts at Sandusky History about The Prisoner's Farewell by Irl Hicks, a confederate POW, who upon release at war's end was selected to give a Valedictory Address to the Young Men's Christian Association of Johnson's Island Ohio.
Anchora discusses the relationship between the use of inverted commas in early modern texts as commonplace markers and Kindle's "popular highlights" feature. Here's mine from hers;
"Once you become aware of the significance of inverted commas in early modern books, though, you will never read them the same way again -- it opens up an entirely new (if, perhaps, still familiar to us) way of reading in which texts are mined for pithy, quotable passages."
Mark Liberman at Language Log takes his shots at the media bias toward "sensationalism, conflict and laziness" and offers up this post entitled "A Reading Comprehension Test". Are you smarter than the designers of this American History test for 12th graders, the educational expert who assessed its results, and the news outlets that covered those findings?
"My recent engagement with the wonderful world of blogs and Twitter has certainly shown me both more interest in and more misused history of science than I had previously come across. (I do not feel, in some cases, that misuse is too strong a word. What the Tea Party do to 18th-century American history, supporters of ID do to Darwin and both sides in the arguments about what Christianity has and has not done for science tend to do to the whole history of Western science.) "
Once again, the comment thread is as thought provoking as the post itself.
Frank Jacobs is Mapping Bloomsday in his Strange Maps blog at Big Think.
"This map is not much help in reconstructing that walk, but it does capture the elementary narrative structure of Ulysses. And it does so in that perennial favourite of schematic itineraries, Harry Beck’s London Underground map."
Ralph Luker kindly passed along this highly visual post by Lili Loufborrow writing at the Hairpin concerning women with books they're not reading in art. Mind you, El Greco's Penitent Magdalen has one heck of a Golgotha paperweight blocking her view. I suspect that Christiane Inman's 2009 Forbidden Fruit: A History of Women and Books in Art , described as "a history of women's literacy, and the social forces that often opposed it", may offer a helpful corollary for those with interest in pursuing this topic further.
The History of England gets a fix on the Anglo Saxon World View. I was particularly struck by the following citation attributed to Louise C., participating in a discussion at Historum Forum;
'A mappa mundi is a depiction of the world as a place of experiences, of human history, of notions and knowledge. It's more like an encyclopedia. It's certainly not - and was never intended to be - a chart to be followed by travellers"
History and the Sock Merchant explores Dejima: the 'Deep Space Nine' of Feudal Japan that was "the single place of direct trade and exchange between Japan and the outside world during the Edo period (1603 - 1868)."
"The volunteers I was working with started turning up some startling items amid the field reports and correspondence—pulp magazines from the 1930s, newspaper clippings with headlines straight out of the era of yellow journalism, and gruesome photos of dead bodies...And what a story it turns out to be! It has everything you’d expect (and wouldn’t expect!) from a Smithsonian expedition to tropical seas—exotic islands, fascinating wild fauna, stout-hearted scientists, a love triangle, and, very likely, murder.."
Looks like excellent beach reading. In other mysterious museum news, Galt Museum & Archives blog has one concerning Miss Edith Kirk, an artist "who came from an influential family in Yorkshire, travelled to remote towns in western Canada and then settled in Lethbridge. We don’t know why she left England, nor how she would find herself in the far northern reaches of British Columbia. Trying to fill in the many gaps of her life is an interesting challenge."
ThinkShop explores Joris Ivens and the Legend of Indonesia Calling, a film about the struggle for Indonesian self determination after WII that few saw at the time but which had an impact that was felt by many.
"By the mid-1960s Indonesia Calling had become a film that had a growing following in Holland, long before it had an audience. This made it unique in the history of the cinema. In its symbolic form it intervened in the historical process, shaping memory and providing a site for the articulation of diametrically opposing approaches to the national, and indeed international, past. The facticity of the film become tangential to it most significant impact. The film as fact had been replaced by the film as signifier."
HSP's Hidden Histories takes us out on an uplifting note with selections from a useful but often underutilized historical resource: the 1850-1880 US Mortality Schedules. Alas for the likes of poor William Shuler, age 54 , who died in June of 1869 in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Norriton Township, "while disinterring a dead body in {a} Cemetery, having a cut on his finger, had his blood poisoned, from which he died."
This concludes History Carnival 100, brought to you this month by the Roman numeral C, and respectfully submitted by your most humble and obedient servant, a sometimes Continental in the recreated 1st New Jersey Regiment who on occasion even manages to go Walking the Berkshires. The History Carnival returns in August and you could be the host! Trust me, Sharon makes it easy and it's much more fun than your viva or junior prom ever were.
The rest of you may submit nominations here or follow along on Twitter (@historycarnival). Now if you'll excuse me, I need to see a man about a ray gun. I'm leaving the Brown Bess at home for my next reenactment. Consider this my warning to the British, à la Palin's Revere; "You are not going to take our atomic pistols!"
Next month’s History Carnival (the Centennial Edition) will be hosted by Walking the Berkshires on July 1st. The last time I was host was History Carnival LVI , and have lost neither my sense of humor nor my eclectic tastes, so if you leave it up to me to showcase worthy history posts you will be in for a wild ride. Actually, this is more or less a certainty, but bring out your best and I'll do the rest.
In the parlance of historical reenacting, the word "farb" is a derogatory term for someone whose indifference to authenticity manifests itself in the use of inappropriate items or anachronistic comportment. The commitment to well documented items of period material culture and accurate historical impressions that draws many of us to the hobby can also produce extreme obsessiveness. There are some who would not dream of appearing in the field in anything less than hand woven, hand died fabrics and uncomfortable straight last shoes, and others who are content to use the best they can get until they can find something better.
Standards of authenticity can range from merely acceptable to absolutely hardcore, but "farby" gear and behavior can be glaringly off putting, and all things being equal I would rather avoid making common mistakes and ill advised purchases.
The trouble is that documentation for some of the items used during the time period of the American Revolution that I depict, either in general or by particular units, is often either extremely limited or non-existent. Unlike the mid 19th century, there are no contemporary photographs of items used and worn by the Continental Army, leaving us only with those artifacts that have survived to the present day, written records (often incomplete and inadequately described), and period illustrations and portraits which provide only a few glimpses of enlisted men and the way they lived, dressed and fought.
I fall in with the 1st New Jersey Continentals (2nd establishment), which depicts the unit on campaign as it was in 1777. This narrows the choices for uniforms and equipment in some respects - no French lottery coats yet - but even so there is no precise documentation of the cut and color of any locally procured uniform coats or any flag that may have been carried by the 1st at this time. Unlike some of its sister regiments in the New Jersey Brigade, surviving correspondence, deserter descriptions advertised in newspapers, orderly books and journals from the 1st NJ do not provide much in the way of definitive documentation.
It is possible that its commander, my ancestor Col. Matthias Ogden, was less attentive to the requirements of quartermaster and commissary than he appears to have been to grievances over the inadequacies of officer pay and to demonstrations of personal courage and daring in the field. It is also possible that in 1777, his first year as commander of the regiment and one in which the unit participated in almost constant marching and a number of sharp engagements, there was little time to devote to requisitions. Historian John Rees has done as fine a job as anyone of documenting the uniforms of the Jersey Troops in the early stages of the war up to the Monmouth Campaign in 1778, and this still leaves a good deal of room for informed guesswork and interpretation.
There is also the problem that even items for which there is contemporary documentation may be historically inaccurate when used by reenactors. Consider the "New Invented Haversack", a one strap knapsack offered for sale by modern sutlers and based on a February 1776 contractor's letter in the Maryland Archives which includes a detailed description of the item and claims that it had already been provided to PA, NJ and VA troops. One might think this was more than adequate documentation, but there is no surviving example of a knapsack of this type and no evidence that any such item was ever provided to troops in the field.
The general consensus among authenticity-conscious reenactors today is that this item should be avoided, but there are very few surviving artifacts or modern sources representing what would be considered an authentic knapsack. The best option I have found is a two strap linen canvas knapsack based on the one carried by Benjamin Warner of Connecticut and currently in the Fort Ticonderoga collection. I was able to get a Warner Knapsack kit that is no longer in production and am now learning how to sew it together authentically, but this takes a high level of commitment and is more effort than others in the hobby might consider worth taking. It ought to be easier to avoid farbiness than this.
The same charge of inauthenticity can be applied to the so-called "Pickering's Tool", an item designed and described by U.S. Quartermaster Thomas Pickering but for which no contemporary example survives in the archaeological record. Being made of iron, such tools may have been lost to corrosion, but still one would expect there to be some artifacts left if they had been widely produced. I learned this fact too late after purchasing my Pickering's Tool, but for $10 it was not as costly a mistake as it might have been and I will use it until I can replace it with something better.
Don't get me started on tents. There has been some excellent research undertaken by participants in the Yahoo group RevList that points to significant differences in authenticity between the 18th century tents manufactored for use during the Revolution and those available today from commercial manufacturers. The more authentic ones made by the 2nd VA are beautiful. Even so, unless you do it yourself, it is going to be extremely difficult to get a professionally made unbleached linen hemp duck canvas wedge tent (untreated) secured by wooden pegs through hemp rope loops with wooden washers and hand stitched grommets and with sectional tent poles held together with iron ferulles. The cost for such an item would be least twice what the standard cotton canvas wedge tent costs with flame retardant and water resistant coating. It will be vulnerable to mildew if packed when wet and may be a poor shelter during a downpour. Is it worth the effort and expense to go this route?
And that brings me back to subjectivity and the personal reasons we are drawn to this hobby. If you spend every waking moment critiquing the presentation of others in the hobby, you are just replicating a clique from High School (and a nerdy one at that). If you do not strive to learn from others in the hobby and to improve your impression, you are doing a disservice to the public and to your fellow reenactors. If it isn't enjoyable, there are better ways to spend one's discretionary income and leisure time.
On a scale of 1-10 where 1 is extremely farby and 10 is obsessively authentic, I am probably about an 8. I will shave my facial hair prior to the campaign season (and that, my friends, is a significant sacrifice to authenticity), but I will not worry if the interior, non visible stitching in my uniform coat is done by machine. I'll leave it to the really hardcore reenactors to go lose forty pounds and half their teeth and develop body lice if they want to. I am making careful choices, within my budget, in the items I acquire, and striving to improve my impression where it makes sense to do so.
Ultimately, what matters most is my behavior, on the firing line, in camp and in conversations with the public. It is more important to me to develop a greater appreciation for why people in the 18th century made the choices they did and took the actions they did - and to convey this to the public - than to quibble over minute differences in original vs. reproductions of the British long land pattern infantry musket. That distinction may be important to others, but not to the general public and is not my top priority.
Mind you, if you look in my haversack next month at Monmouth (a hand-stitched unbleached linen haversack, no less), you will find parched corn and a big slab of salt-cured bacon, nicely washed with the mold scrubbed off. My accouterments were chosen to be appropriate for early war Continental or militia use (hemp webbing instead of cotton or leather straps). My (used) civilian shoes have holes in them, and will be replaced with more authentic rough side out versions before the cold weather season. I have a wool blanket that is good enough for now.
It is a process of ongoing refinement, and curiosity, and of courtesy to others. I like my unit and my comrades, and that matters most of all.
I saw Dances with Wolves during its theatrical release. I was mesmerized, but I was predisposed to be so. I have been a fan of westerns since I was weaned on recordings of The Lone Ranger, and was a Civil War buff of longstanding. I was also a fan of the anti-western, or rather, the alternative to the standard, white hatted version of western history where the story was not just the one that made it into dime novels or technicolor. When I was in 2nd grade, I started receiving volumes from Time Life books Old West series, and I knew that there was more to the frontier than cowboys and Indians. I also knew that Indians generally got short shrift in westerns.
The movie, as with any creative work, is a reflection of its own time. It feels dated now, with its sympathetic retelling from the perspective of the native people (the Lakota, anyway) and depiction of ecological devastation and culture genocide associated with European dominance of the prairie. It is not a movie that would have been made in 1970, or 2011. It is a love story, really, a yearning for something lost, or maybe to be lost ourselves in that wide open solitude of the young land before the plow.
The use of the Lakota language and the many domestic scenes in the camp of the Sioux, make the film feel more like ethnography than Hollywood. Its native American actors are far more authentic than their predecessors on the silver screen. The cinematography is gorgeous, seductive, even, for one who loves the wild, and fell in love with the idea of Native Americans back in the days when I played "pioneers and Indians" as one of them.
It is an ugly movie, also, when it shows the degradation of the despoilers of the West and the savagery of the Pawnee (humanizing the Sioux at their expense). It is unsubtle, and yet easily dismissed in our cynical age. It embarresses us, today, sticky with the political correctness of its day and its seven Academy awards. We prefer to think that Clint Eastwood reinvented and ressurected the Western genre with Unforgiven in 1992, forgetting that Wolves won Best Picture as well and two years before. Both films are about moral ambiguity, but Dances with Wolves is about choosing sides across an irreconcilable gulf between two worlds, while Unforgiven has only antiheroes and is a much bleaker vision of humanity. All that is missing is the profanity of Deadwood to bring it up to date.
Dances with Wolves is a romance on an epic scale. It is a throwback because it is a romance that wears its loyalties on its buckskinned sleeve, but a decent one, by and large. It reminds me of my years living in Africa, among those of other cultures where everything was new, for us all. I relate to that part of the movie in ways I cannot relate to the characters in Unforgiven. It is not a true picture of the West, any more than any western movie can be, but it is moving and it was groundbreaking twenty odd years ago, and an important piece of film history even if it belongs to another time.
