Article Link: John Dean

The Daily Beast recently ran an interesting interview with John Dean, available here.  I don't particularly agree with his characterization of the skills of lawyers versus historians (no problem with lawyers; just think he should give historians more credit).  It's fascinating that one of the key figures in the Watergate affair has become perhaps the authoritative expert on Nixon's role in the cover-up.  The interview includes a link to Bob Woodward's glowing review of Dean's The Nixon Defense.  

Today in History: Windy City

Chicago was incorporated as a town on this date in 1833.  It would be incorporated as a city four years later.  As historian William Cronon so eloquently explained in his Nature's Metropolis, the Windy City became the locus point for the development of the United States as breadbasket -- and side of beef, and so on -- to the world.

Chicago's first permanent non-Native resident was a man named Jean Baptist Point du Sable.  He was a free black man, probably from Haiti, who arrived in the 1770s.  Chicago's checkered racial legacy -- burgeoning African American culture spurred by the Great Migration of the World War I era coupled with insidious residential "red-lining" -- makes this origin story all the more fascinating.

See this history provided by the City of Chicago for more information and anecdotes regarding this central location, literally and figuratively, in the development of American political, economic, and cultural life.

Images from the Past: Summer Camp

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Here's a nice little colorized number in honor of day camp week here at the Gifford household, a blessed time of fun for the 8-year-old and lesson planning/article editing for me.  This hand-tinted vintage postcard from the 1950s (available for purchase from a Eugene, Oregon artist via the link) demonstrates that while styles may change, the goofy faces children of this age make for photographs remain constant...

Reflection on the Week: Stories

Our community recently experienced the tragedy of a missing wife and mother.  Sadly, she was found a couple days ago, having evidently experienced the hopelessness that leads to suicide.  Unfortunately, even those close to an individual can't always discern what is going on inside another's head.  I feel awful for her husband, her children, and her family and friends.

One thing that struck me, though, was how news of her story -- her life as a member of the community, and her unexplained disappearance after leaving to run errands one day -- permeated our town, prompting search efforts and communication networks that extended for days.  Folks knew her story.  They identified with her and her family.  And they cared.

Remarks have been made about citizens' willingess to put forth so much effort to find someone who was white, who was relatively privileged (simply by being middle class), who perhaps looked like them, when so many people in our country fail to receive similar treatment.  Perhaps they're too poor; perhaps they're minorities; perhaps their life journeys have taken them down paths with which it's harder for middle-class America to identify.  And I know that -- tragically -- this is true.  It happens.  It's not just.

Even so, I'm intrigued by the possibilities of story.  We who are human are storytellers.  We need narrative to feel compassion, to move down the road toward understanding.  I would argue this is something fundamental in the way we are wired.  Part of the problem with the deficiencies in our society noted in the previous paragraph is our failure to take sufficient time to hear others' stories, to develop the connections narrative brings and start to feel that compassion.  It was easy to hear this local woman's story; it's harder to hear the stories that come from contexts outside our lived experience.

What would happen if we worked harder to learn stories?  We privilege quantifiable information -- refugee numbers, casualty figures, crime statistics, and lines of demarcation in conflicts.  What if we spent more time on refugees' stories?  The details of the lives that are lost?  The life journey traveled, both by the victim and the criminal?  The identities of combatants?  For that matter, what would happen if we knew more about our elected officials -- and our elected officials knew the stories of the people and groups with whom they disagree?  If we recognized people, and not just undifferentiated populations, how might that change things?

I don't want to suggest this is a one-step path to world peace, but I do believe it's worth some thought.  I am weary of vitriol and weary of "othering."  By that logic, I am somebody else's "other."  You are somebody else's "other."  We both know we are so much more than that, don't we?  Let's learn the stories.

Article Link: Science in History

This article in the Huffington Post about a colonial-era ship discovered during excavations for the new World Trade Center buildings illustrates a contention I've long made with my introductory survey students: the study of history is the study of everything about our past, all the innumerable elements that contribute to our existence today.  Here, remarkable tools of science -- dendrochronology, in particular -- have been put in service of understanding when this ship was constructed, where it was built, how it was used and even what might have led to its discovery almost two and a half centuries later, buried deep under lower Manhattan.  History is about curiosity and a search for understanding.  The names and the dates of our common perceptions of "history class" are mere data points in the context of something far deeper and broader -- and essential to our understanding of who we are.  Our self-perceptions may not turn upon the identification of one ship, but the story is a great illustration of how many approaches we can take toward exploration of our past.  Science, too, is a historical discipline!

Today in History: Red Means Stop and Green Means Go

In my new weekly schema, tomorrow (Wednesday) is designated "article link day" and today (Tuesday) is "today in history."  That said, sometimes it isn't worth duplicating what somebody else has done so well.  A hundred years ago today, the first electric traffic light was installed, at the corner of East 105th and Euclid in Cleveland, Ohio.  Take a look at this brief, interesting story about the genesis of traffic signals from the International Business Times.

Images from the Past: World War I

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I've designated Mondays "historical image day," and while typically this will be an image from American history I wanted to commemorate British entry into World War I, 100 years ago today, with this variation on what Americans have tended to think of as their iconic image!  

We recently returned from two weeks in Britain, and with the centenary of the Great War approaching quite a lot of public attention was focused upon remembrance of this conflict.  A hundred years on, ceremonies are planned and poppies adorn monuments in almost all the towns we visited in England and Wales.  Many of the country's Great War monuments were simply updated with the names of men lost in World War Two.  I was struck by the fact that in most cases, the list from the former was longer than the list from the latter.  Devastating as World War II was to Britain -- and to its Empire -- the sheer numbers lost during World War I beggar belief.