Interior manifestation

For what purpose this life,
the body a mysterious object;
this particular consciousness,
a mind both whole and opaque;
this particular moment
so strange and yet so ordinary?
Where is its radiance?

Here is a raw geode, unbroken;
I can hold it in my hand and it
appears as simply a stone might—
rough and cool, a weight in my palm.
But from within I can feel the heat
radiating outward—as I
brush the dust from the crevices
I know inside there lies dormant a
glittering core, a heart of vibrant color.
Understanding this, I close my eyes:
you are whole, but transparent to me.
Tell me—do I dare split it open?

More great gym ideas

Okay, so I work out at the Y, which is a pretty great place, but I have a few ideas which could improve the experience, and also the attendance. The first is environmental in nature. I thought of all the collective workouts happening all over the country and the world, and thought: why can't they hook up the stationary bikes and rowing machines to the power grid, so that we are all generating energy which can be put to good use, and which is made by burning calories instead of coal? I know I'm not the first to think of this--so c'mon! I bet more people would go to the gym if they thought they'd be helping out the planet too.

The second has to do with the very special Expresso bikes. (This reminds me of the time at the University of Chicago when the newspaper editor joked he was going to the Henry Crown Gymnasium to work out on the Lexis-Nexis machines--which incidentally is a law database) Anyway, the Expresso bikes have various scenic routes to ride, and they also have a video game which features Chinese dragons. This is all very good, but I have some better game ideas.

How about "Cyclo Driver: Streets of Hanoi, Vietnam"? Your goal is to drive your cyclo from the university to the No Noodles shop without getting hit by a crazy motorcyclist! Bonus points at intersections.

Or what about "North Shore X-treme Crazy Mountain Bike Ride"? The more jumps, drops, and skinny tracks through the Pacific Northwest terrain, the better!

Or, finally, "2 AM: Ukrainian Village to Lakeview, Chicago." Nothing like a smooth ride down those city streets when the traffic is quiet and last call has just been made.

Three places, with rain

Thirsty desert dust, primeval Sierra mountains behind me,
sitting on the Renault outside a cowboy bar when it starts to rain
big heavy tears, as the Nevada plain stretches out in front of me.

Monsoon in the jungle, tall bamboo, sugar cane and bananas
and a little girl holding the biggest damn grasshopper;
It’s the size of a lobster, and somehow I’m not even fazed.

Sitting on top of a slick wet grave, the one that says “Going.”
The one next to it says “Good,” so depending on which way
you look at them, it’s Good Going or Going Good.

Unspoken [excerpt]

There is no single place: for me there are so many,
like shards of broken glass, shattered across the small planet--
etched into my skin like scars; they form patterns in the
muscle and bone; they are the well-worn synapses.
I think to myself, “hey, that’s in the realm of poetry,
sacred, you know.” You can only give those stories away,
like a song, like a flower left in secret on your doorstep,
like a hand on your shoulder, that moment of warmth.

Hyde Park dream

This dream started very far away from Hyde Park (Chicago), as I was picking up some intermittent work from Leary & Wilson, framing a building which looked a lot like the Shelburne Winery (at the stage where we were standing walls). I said something funny to Crippy, and then I realized it wasn't Crippy, it was just another guy who looked like him. All the crew that I had known in the past was gone. Ben seemed different too, but I really noticed when he lit a cigarette (in real life, Ben doesn't smoke).

But shortly I found myself in Hyde Park, making my way back to my office from class. The quads were green and lush, and the ivy was bright and growing rampantly all over the stone walls. I decided to shortcut through one of the gothic buildings--a large one--but realizing that it was not one which I was very familiar with. On the inside, I discovered that there wasn't an identical set of wooden doors on the other side of the building, but instead a huge open stone or slate staircase. Above and all around were the typical gothic details you find in those buildings. I decided to go upstairs and have a look around. There was a fellow coming up behind me, maybe in his late 50s. He said, "are you on the way to [mumbled] class?" I said no, that I was just having a look around, but then I got curious. On the uppermost floor, I could see where the class was being held, and I went in. It had already started, but it looked like it was being team-taught by the guy who had followed me up the stairs, and another fellow. I gathered it was a philosophy/science class--the philosophy of science? But rather more specific in nature. I sat down and took out my notebook; I thought it might be fun to listen in on lecture.

The lecture started with a discussion of the Litt-Avis Overconverter (if anything should ever be named this, I insist upon credit!). I realized that the second professor was wearing a blue shirt, and his haircut was distinctly Spock-like. After class, the professor who'd followed me up the stairs stopped to talk with me, and we were going on for a bit when I realized that I had missed the lecture I was supposed to attend (the 111 class that I am the TA for here at UMass) and was already halfway into my office hours. I started in a run for Social Sciences (ah you dreamer, thinking your office is in Social Sciences!) and didn't make it before I woke up.

Systemic circulation

There's great gaps and silences
while I'm watching the patterns of your veins
as they splay upwards and return
to the center, to your heart.
From across the room I can feel
the beat and the flow
a hint of a smile when
spent cells become reoxygenated;
a little laughter when
I have to win you over ev'ry day anew.

A few words from "Two Gentle People"

"They did not exchange addresses or telephone numbers, for neither of them dared to suggest it: the hour had come too late in both their lives. He found her a taxi and she drove away towards the great illuminated Arc, and he walked home by the Rue Jouffroy, slowly. What is cowardice in the young is wisdom in the old, but all the same one can be ashamed of wisdom. ...

"...while he sat beside her and remembered the street outside the brasserie and how, by accident he was sure, he had been called "tu."
'What are you thinking?' Patience asked. 'Are you still in the Rue de Douai?'
'I was only thinking that things might have been different,' he said.
It was the biggest protest he had ever allowed himself to make against the condition of life."

--Graham Greene

Old house dream

I dreamt last night that Pat and I were carpooling to work, south on 89. Pat was his usual self: funny, charming, cavalier about work. We talked a little about Stanley, his dad. He was looking at some drawings and photographs of mine, and I guess I mentioned that I wanted to get a picture of the old house at Cherry Street. So he got off at exit 17 so we could stop by. We drove up the street and I saw it: changed. It was brick (which seemed right, even though in life it was clapboard), but the new owners had taken down the front porch. It looked naked. They had attached a beat up old barn door across the front entrance, and there were a few abandoned junkyard cars on the left side of the building. My heart sank.

I had a key, so we went in. Oddly, it appeared lived in. There was furniture, and it looked in reasonable shape, though the configuration of the house was different. In the basement, there was flooring, but the flooring was interrupted by rock formations that jutted from the floor. When we came back upstairs, I noticed water seeping in at all the joints, and cascading down the center of the double-paned door. It gave me chills, all of a sudden. I looked around back and to the side, where Tina’s house should have been. Instead, there was a huge outcropping of rock. The rocks were gray, peach, and sandstone, mottled. It was much too large to have been put there, but I knew it couldn’t be natural, either. Instead of being flat, out back, there was a steep slope down, after which I noticed nothing. Everything was strange, and silent.

We heard a car pull up, and I was afraid we’d be in trouble for trespassing, so we hurried outside. As it turns out, it wasn’t the owners, but a rental agent who thought that we were looking to rent the place. I was angry and chilled at the same time. I tried to find Pat so we could leave, but for some reason, he went back inside. And then I woke up.

On teaching (part 2)

My previous post--that was a class, and an instructor to whom I responded positively. There were other, not so happy times, too. In the fall two years prior to the class above, I took my very first college class [a core social science] on a Monday or Tuesday morning, with MP. He was an intimidating figure then--impossibly crisp at all times in his mandarin collar shirt, with his hair slicked back, and round gold-rimmed glasses. A few weeks into the class, I went to see him at office hours (which was required). It was a trek into the ivory tower, as physically represented by the sixth floor of Harper. It really was a funny little tower, with more gothic windows overlooking the interior courtyard.


View of the interior courtyard (mew)

We had to sign up for office hours in 15-minute increments; graduate students could have 30 minutes. Before me, there was a graduate student, talking about Heidegger, I think. I was tongue-tied; I had nothing to say. It may not have been so imposing in reality, but I remember a very large desk, behind which MP was sitting, possibly leaning back with his fingertips touching--you know, the C. Montgomery Burns position--except that instead of “excellent,” he was saying, “this is a puzzling paper.” I’m not sure what I needed just then, but a human connection would have been nice. How I managed to pass the class--by finding something (anything!) to say about Marx, or Freud, or Durkheim--is beyond me.

In some ways my capacities are greater now, but I’m still capable of feeling adrift, left behind. My struggle with Sewell (and Geertz and Sahlins, by extension) is evidence of this. Life experience (including MP’s class, but also the intervening years since then) has made deciphering abstractions easier. I experienced a similar phenomenon mathematically, when I retook the GRE after having been a carpenter for three years. I did better. But my memory of college bears a certain similarity to my memories of early childhood: you know enough to be aware of the newness of everything, but not enough to do anything about it.

A pleasanter recollection of office hours is found in my memory of EL. I suspect he was somewhere between 75 and 80 when we first met. He wore large hearing aids; the kind that fit over the earpiece of your glasses. Also, he was a large man, both tall and robust. He used to wax poetic in class about potatoes and butter (he was Irish, you see, and it was Irish history). He used the Socratic method in class. You had to come prepared, like in The Paper Chase, because he would go ‘round the room, posing questions. It really looked bad when you couldn’t answer.

Nevertheless, he was a popular instructor, and at test-time I could only get a seat on the floor (thank goodness not everyone came to class for lecture). EL also required everyone to visit him at office hours. He remains the only person who has ever asked me:

EL: “So, what does your father do for a living?”
Me: [laughs] "Hopefully nothing!"
EL: “Oh, is he retired?”
Me: "Oh no, he passed away years ago."
EL: "He what?" [adjusts hearing aid]
Me: "He’s dead."
EL: “Oh, well, what did he do for a living?”

I have to give him credit for not saying “I’m sorry;” I hate when people do that. We also bonded over a love of Wilkie Collins, the Victorian sensation novelist and friend of Dickens. Even during his Socratic moments, EL was able to put you at ease. Some people do this quite naturally, others can’t . . . and in some cases, it depends upon the individual chemistry between student and professor.

On teaching (part 1)

I’ve been reading, among other things, UMass’s Handbook for New Instructors, in preparation for spring semester. In thinking about teaching, I am reminded of how I survived the Great Purge of Modern Chinese History. Picture it: Social Sciences 108(?), a small room on the first floor of a gothic building on 59th Street, with arched, multi-paned windows overlooking the Midway through wintering ivy. The first day of class, and I suspect there were 25 or 30 of us packed in there. 艾恺 comes striding in, in his customary fashion (I knew him already from his Civ course). I suppose he assessed the room and decided that the class was too large. He then began to lecture, and through his sharp content-driven questioning, he proceeded to frighten 15 students into never again returning to class.

I did not deserve to be spared. Perhaps he remembered me from the previous fall. Of course, even had he humiliated me, I would still have returned to class on Wednesday, and so maybe he thought any effort expended there would be in vain. Or, possibly he liked me. As I said, I didn’t deserve the confidence. He asked me two things (I’m sure I looked like I was in severe pain, since I was waiting for the other shoe to drop through the whole class):
1) “Miriam, you know what feng shui is?" (geomancy) and
2) “You’ve seen The Last Emperor?" (I hadn’t. This requires some explanation. He must have remembered me since a conversation in the previous year had uncovered a mutual love of movies, and had touched upon both The Cardinal and Oliver Reed’s enforced weight loss.)

Tenacity has its rewards, and we remain friends. Often, when I’m teaching a large group, I like to pretend that I am 恺. This includes his way of striding around, his mannerisms in talking, his actorly presence. Of course, I would never do what I’ve described above—I haven’t the nerve, or the heart. In my experience of him as a warm, personable, human individual, this incident has always puzzled me a little. Whatever its meaning, it really brings me back to a moment in which I can really, viscerally, remember what college is like—internally. And what it is like is . . . terrifying.


Social Sciences classroom (mew)

Midnight Mass

So I attended midnight Mass on Christmas Eve at Our Lady of Czestochowa (in Turners Falls) without chickening out. It was pretty, and smelled nice, though they might have given a page number now and again so I could see where we were in the liturgy. I was sitting in the back with all the other folks who don't take communion. There were quite a few people there, though, and most of them did go up for communion... and not all of them were in the senior set. The homily was of an interesting nature. He started out with a very gentle critique of the Bishop's method for bringing people back in to the fold, and then began to talk about the reasons which one might want to either return to Catholicism, (or perhaps convert?). As a way of beginning, he talked about the big bang--undoubtedly an unusual topic for a Christmas sermon. I guess the point was that there is an unknown at the time of the big bang--the "nothing" from which something is created. It is like Catholics (and Jews) to accept science and incorporate it into religious meaning, so for this I am appreciative, and it is one of the many similarities I find between the two religions.

He also spoke (though less eloquently than Gerry, the Vicar of Dibley!) about the enduring power of the story of Jesus, of Christhood, and the spread of the gospel over the last 2000ish years. It's been said better, but anyway. It was a nice, inclusive service, and there was some Polish in there, naturally, but the congregation is far from homogenous. There are African-American, Hispanic and other European-American parishioners there. I managed to sing along when I could, especially for Kyrie, which I like.


Swiss Guard at the Vatican, 2007 (mew)

Sanctus - Missa Luba

Also have a listen to:
Kyrie
Gloria
Agnus Dei

Sewell and Turners Falls

The paper about Sewell's Logics of History and its implications is done. I can now die with nothing on my conscience.

Winter gloaming
white houses
streets slick with ice
and lights strung up.
Plastic Santa Claus
lit from inside
like I never saw anything so beautiful

Migratons

You and I, we did the same thing
we discovered the East,
leaving the hot sun and the shimmering oil
on Highway 99 through the Central Valley;
leaving Locke or Groveland or Oakdale,
passing Murder Burger;
leaving the fruit and vegetables that
flourish in the dust.

We crossed the mountains into
alkali desert.
You can't water your cows there
it's a primeval land of rocks and salt
and a lone coyote pants by the side of the road.
We stopped at a cowboy bar,
where the jukebox was playing,
when suddenly it rained huge heavy tears.
We drove fast on 80, maybe
racing into Salt Lake City,
a grid at the foot of the Wasatch.

And then we drove on to Chicago,
following the I & M
lost in Bridgeport with the ghost scent
of the stockyards creeping around the corners.
You and I, we spent a few years there;
I don't know how you were affected,
but I still bear a weight from that place
around my shoulders.

And then we came to the East,
with its carnivorous greenery;
the forests which rise
to cover all human detritus.
It has been my home, and yours.
I long for the desert (do you?),
"500 Metres" the music of the sand and stone.
We discovered the East, both of us--
but how we have been separated by time.

Portelli, Stanton, and musing

Well, things are moving slowly. I'll be in the new old house by December 9, I think. I ran out of heating oil yesterday night, which made me pretty unhappy all night and half of today, as I tried to rectify that. And then back to work. There was one pleasant surprise this week--some positive comments back on a piece of writing. I almost had a heart attack and died.

We discussed Portelli's The Order Has Been Carried Out, and somewhat surprisingly, people reacted in some of the most cold, clinical ways to it. I could hardly imagine why! It was as if Umberto Eco and Elie Wiesel had somehow combined to conduct oral histories in Rome. How poetically David Blight and Ed Linenthal responded to it, and how unpoetically, well... Anyway, the story is this, briefly: a Nazi massacre of 335 Romans occurred less than 24 hours after an Italian Partisan attack on the Nazis (killing 35), but years and decades later, Italians remember the Nazis requesting the surrender of the partisans to avoid the retaliation. In the end, many people blame the partisans, not the Nazis, for the massacre. It is an fascinating ambivalence on the part of Italians about their own involvement, and a sad commentary on politics, and an intriguing study of memory--of course. But why on earth did no one mention the memorial structure of the book? (You'll have to look at the book to see it--I don't really want to describe it). How could you not see that aspect of the book as somehow central? Like it or hate it, it was probably what I would have written about, if I'd had to write about the book myself.

I was also drawn in to The Lowell Experiment, though a lot of people seemed to have a lot of problems with it. As for me, I thought it elaborated quite well on Handler and Gable's The New History in an Old Museum and attempted to address some of the potential problems with that particular study. And people love Handler and Gable. What gives? Stanton dives right into the difficult questions: what of the homogeneity of museum visitors, public historians, interpreters, et al? Do historic sites fail to bridge gaps between the present and the past, or fail to admit to cyclical economic behavior rather than a linear progression? What of the attempts at including diversity, or social justice in the historical narrative? And most fascinating of all, that historians and anthropologists and presumably other professionals have difficulties with insight into their own colleagues--and so, what result does that have on the evidence they collect? At every turn, there was something really exciting to think about--and the best part is, there are no answers.

I am often accused of "musing" in my writing (this criticism is accompanied by "lose the first person")... and as a matter of fact, I do often muse. Well, I think, what about all these authors we read, whose writing is littered with the first person, and who are musing in the extreme (!). I understand that you must pay your dues (apparently over and over and over again) but when you think about the mechanics of learning, you see that people learn to write by reading. And what they're reading influences what they write. (Which is why I continue to hope that someday I will pop out a Graham Greene novel, after so many years of wonderful immersion. I would settle for a short story.)

What else? I also had dream that involved me getting a paper back from DG, and as I flipped through it, I realized that I hadn't looked at the pages after they'd printed, and so did not realize that some of the paper had printed in gibberish (zapf wingdings?). And, in what might actually be in the style of DG's sense of humor, he had written some comments in French. I don't, of course, speak French. So naturally I found the joke very amusing, but I was also mortified. I think I would rather dream about the Mormons and the Mennonites fighting charcoal creatures at a sanatorium.

Dream fragments

Some part of my dreams last night went like this: I was walking into a grocery store for some mundane item (perhaps a chocolate bar?) when I saw a little bundle of folded cash on the floor near the doors. I picked it up and looked all around, and then looked at it. There was about $80.00 there. I fought a brief internal struggle and then went to the service desk to turn it in. The guy there was busy with a phone call, and as I waited, I looked at the cash again. This time I saw that the bills were in fact elaborate fakes. So I gave up and went away.

The next place I happened to be was in an institutional-style building (maybe a school or dormitory) which had white or whitewashed cement walls. I think there might have been some kind of art installation there. As I was walking through, I spoke briefly with some people there who I knew in the dream, but don't know in life. And then I wandered outside. A whole series of buildings, some institutional and some cabin-like dotted a picturesque, hilly, green area. There were two groups of people, who seemed to be at odds with one another (and they were dressed rather strangely, at that). I believe I identified them as Mennonites and Mormons. Obviously Donald Worster's Dust Bowl and Rivers of Empire were infiltrating my subconscious, even though I'd been reading Raymond Chandler before bed. Anyway, there was some kind of forbidden love story between two of the young people, not to mention hideous monsters made of iron and charcoal roaming the countryside. The girl in the forbidden romance had just killed one of them with a broadsword when I woke up. Uh huh, yup.

Three quotes for tonight

Harry Stoner: Everybody misses.
Margo: Not professionals.
Harry Stoner: Oh yeah, professionals too. Quarterbacks get knocked down, nurses get knocked up, somebody invented the Edsel. Everybody misses.
Save The Tiger, 1973

"God was silent.
Cohn tried to squeeze out a small assurance."
Bernard Malamud, God's Grace

And one from Racine:
"Love is not a fire to be shut up in a soul. Everything betrays us: voice, silence, eyes; half-covered fires burn all the brighter."

Assorted, uncategorized, adrift

"I fell in with some drifters
Cast upon a beachtown
Winn Dixie cold cuts and highway hand me downs
And I wound up fixing dinner
For them and Boston Jim
I well up with affection
Thinking back down the roads to then." (Joni Mitchell)

Getting ready for another long drive tomorrow, preceded by an outflow of cash that is guaranteed to feel like desanguination. House two weeks away. Odd class responses to recent readings. Manifest Destinies turned out to be a little on the controversial side, which I found surprising. It was primarily a legal history, which led to some negative comments about sources. My contention, I think, is that court cases, legal documents, policy reports--they are all legitimate primary sources. But I think people wanted to see sources from around these things--so as to gauge the public opinion behind the decisions. The sources may or may not exist--but I see the point of asking for them. Also raised the question of whether using historic (primary) sources that reference another document (which may or may not be available, like a 19th century report that mentions a letter received) is appropriate, and how often can it be done? I had hoped for HR and JH to weigh in, but no such luck. HR did have some issues with factual weakness in the book, as well, but I'm not sure how we're supposed to be able to assess that without more extensive background.

We talked briefly about the school of "whiteness studies," (mentioned in an earlier post about Roediger) and to some degree I have the same response to that as I do to gender studies. There's no question that [socially constructed] gender, and [the creation of] race have a tremendous amount of influence on the world. But I have an issue with framing an entire history that way. In the case of race, I find the argument overly simplistic. As with Roediger, I can't find a history that chronicles Southern and Eastern European immigrant transformation to whiteness either provocative or exciting. A legal history of Mexican American conflict in NM in the 19th century is interesting without tying itself to "whiteness studies." And I find I can't quite articulate my problems with using gender as a category of analysis. Joan Scott goes to great lengths to provide reasons and templates for doing this using literary deconstruction, and it drives me crazy. Maybe my problem isn't with "gender" (except that it is, sort of) but is a problem with "category of analysis." I feel like my thoughts here are too many and too confused to be contained in this one paragraph, so moving on...

Odd responses to Rivers of Empire too. I was fascinated by the connection to Wittfogel, particularly since Worster readily admits to Wittfogel's failings. And Worster's case studies about the utopian communities in Colorado (ie. Greeley, which is Centennial, by the way), and about the Mormon land and water use in Utah were fascinating examples of hydraulic societies. But I think I was in the minority here. I do admit that Worster's description of the Central Valley was spot on, but when he calls it unpicturesque, disjointed, corporate--I have to admit my jaw dropped. From the old woman selling okra by the side of the road all the way to the pesticide billboard and the migrant workers, I saw... beauty. I saw people living outside a corporate, capitalist order against all odds. For me, it was a perfect picture of how humans live so messily in and outside an imposed structure. And through Worster's description, all of it shines in the golden sun on the golden hills and in the shimmering desert fields--but that is me the poet, the romantic.

And I didn't have enough to say today, about Crimes Against Nature. Feel like crap as a result. Wish we'd talked more about policy here. When we talk about nature as secular religion, I feel like it is a kind of dead end. Yes, clearly the nation (the western world, perhaps) sees something holy in nature, particularly in grand natural formations, regardless of whether they identify as religious individuals. We can easily take nature as a national religion in a country where we at least give lip service to religious freedom: Yosemite speaks equally to Jews, Buddhists, Christians, Wiccans, et al. I assume. I have a hard time finding something to grab on to here. The connection between historical and current policy is sort of interesting to me, though, and in particular, I was curious to find out how likely it might be that this particular work could be used as a defense for deregulation on federally-owned lands. It was a criticism of the book itself, and while I realize the policy changes are realities we face right now, I want to know how much of a responsibility an individual author needs to feel about his contribution to the potential problem.

Two Jobsites

Two interesting, but oppositional things going on down in the Amherst area this week:

I was looking up at the roof work being done on the Student Center on the UMass campus, and I saw a sight which is beautiful to OSHA eyes. On the right side, the leading edge of the building was entirely enclosed by safety rails, which were both properly secured and neatly nailed together. On the left side, there was a guy doing leading-edge work. He was wearing a hardhat, pants, a shirt, boots, and a safety harness. The harness was attached with a lanyard to a rope, and there was no slack. All the guys on and around the building were wearing hardhats, and guys in basket-lifts were properly tied-off. I thought, well, I guess that makes sense since this is such a high-profile job.

The next day, I was in Montague Turners Falls. On Montague City Road, in yet another high profile location (a new commercial building being erected next to the grocery store) I saw the exact opposite. These guys were sheathing the hipped roof on this new building, and ... NO ONE was wearing a hard hat. Everyone was in sneakers. One guy was wearing shorts and two had no shirt (it was about 48 F). There was no toeboard at the bottom of the roof to keep things from sliding down (on about a 4/12 pitch, which isn't really steep, but things still slide off!). Worst of all, no one was tied off to anything. There were no safety harnesses, ropes, lanyards, or anything resembling fall protection. I have a hard time believing that the OSHA requirements for safety in commercial settings apply in Amherst but not Turners Falls. I think if I'd gone over with a camera in hand, everyone would have been off that roof in seconds--which would have been funny, come to think of it!

Love to eat dem mousies

At my mom's house, which is located among some conserved beaver ponds, Abby and Zoey Katz were wandering around, stalking various critters. Abby caught a baby shrew, which expired, and Zoey killed an unidentified rodent of considerable cuteness. Neither of them was hungry (of course), and so we had to throw them into the woods. Hopefully some hungry critter will find them and eat them up.

We also saw some evidence of deer, and there are a couple kinds of ducks floating around the ponds. I haven't seen the turkeys or the grouse around these parts yet, but I have seen both along the freeway, presumably trying to get killed.

Sewell and theory

William Sewell’s article on the shift from social to cultural history would have been a much more useful text to include alongside Thompson, et al., last week, because (while it is a commentary on the domination of cultural history in the field in recent years) it also provides a much clearer picture of what social history is, and isn’t. Part of this clarity comes from Sewell’s placement of social history and cultural history in a sort of opposition—and also comes from Sewell’s distinctions between history/historians and the various fields and practitioners of social science.

Causing me further consternation is the question (in my mind) about where history is going. My understanding of history has been of an interdisciplinary, multi-theory (or theory-less), interpretive field; certainly a field without objective truth, regardless of the level of rigor applied to historical inquiries. However, I suddenly find mine to be a minority position—and I’m surprised. It’s not that the people around me (classmates and some professionals) would take such a hard line stance about objectivity, but what they’re saying, and what they’re writing, is in favor of a far more positivist viewpoint. They are skeptical about interpretation, find repellent the use of memory as historical document, and call incessantly for admission upon admission of bias, or uncertainty.

Added to this is Sewell’s implication that historians borrow theory from the social sciences, and twist, bend or amalgamate when the theory doesn’t quite fit… and that historians ought to be talking about, and developing theory from within. Sewell also discussed his wariness about the shift to cultural history and the large abandonment of social history, and what problems this causes. If social history borrows the language and methods of the sciences and the social sciences (quantitative data, for example, or creating theory based on events or social trajectories), then cultural history focuses too much on the individual circumstance to the exclusion of generalizable trends.

I never thought that Marshall Sahlins could be placed in opposition to, say, Natalie Zemon Davis, but apparently I’ve been missing great rifts between fields. Possibly I have not been careful enough about discovering what individual historians are doing when they write. I should know, I suppose, whether GA's writing is more oriented towards the social sciences or the humanities, at the very least (I suspect the latter, but I’m inclined to think it weaves back and forth over the boundary I used to ignore).

Some of this, I think, is due to the particular structure of the Core at the U of C, where I believe the emphasis was on the crossover of sociological thought, historical anthropology, intellectual history, literature, and the evolution of scientific thought. I realize this seems at once obvious and overreaching. Yes, the fields are connected—and no, they’re not. The social sciences do attempt to find social theory—something approaching a scientific theory that may be applied to many circumstances and with roughly the same results. Yet the historian’s approach is more complex and messy (despite, at the U of C, being a segment of the Social Sciences Division).

And then in the intervening (almost) ten years, I’ve had the chance to see just that many more ambiguities. Is the positivist thinking I’m seeing here, or the new-new social/cultural history Sewell calls for—are these the histories of the future? Probably to my disadvantage I am unwilling to discount any method, theory, or non-theory as the “wrong” way to do history. I’m sure I’m supposed to come down on a side—and if I do, will I then be hopelessly out-of-date?

Social history

The conversation we had at breaktime in Public History suggests to me that the discussion we had in Intro/History, regarding social history, was somehow unsatisfying, inconclusive. It was. There's no inherent problem in not resolving the argument, but when everyone leaves confused and adrift, maybe it wasn't the most productive discussion.

The question which we discussed most was: is social history a European construct, and something that does not exist for Americanists--and if it is a European mode of study, does it still exist, in what forms, and how useful is it? I can only give you my particular take on the discussion, and given the comments on my last paper, I am undoubtedly completely misguided. So, like LeVar Burton, I will say, "but don't take my word for it..."

HR had put the question out about Americanists, and my feeling was this: if you are starting with data "from below," (ie. bread riots or labor strikes, or working class insults, or whatever) and your goal is to project the data into a larger and longer social, political or economic trend which says something broad, then you are doing social history, whether or not you choose to call it that. Americanists call themselves political, labor, economic, consumer, environmental, whatever historians but often shun the social history label.

Problem being, there are Americanists calling themselves social historians, and the argument HR makes is that they're doing cultural history instead (let's not get into that can of worms!). The Europeanists (E.P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm, a bunch of German historians whose names I can't recall) appear to be working from a Marxian framework regarding capitalism (and possibly even Marxist, if you're talking about Thompson), but unlike some in the class, I did not think that a labor/proletariat oriented Marxian framework was necessary for doing social history. However, I am leaning towards the idea that some framework (of your choosing) is necessary for creating true social history, and the presence of a framework indicates to me that you (the historian) have an agenda that is at least mildly political.

This is not to say that an historian can be without agenda or bias; far from it. I am not (Not Not Not) a positivist... As DG put it to me earlier, "I thought [Peter] Novick had put all that to rest [in That Noble Dream]" and clearly, well, he hasn't. (I remember now, it was Armistead Maupin who wrote (in Brian Hawkins's voice) that his generation would be succeeded by a generation of Calvinists. And so... a generation of groundbreaking postmodernism has been succeeded by the New Positivism.) But I guess my implication about frameworks is that cultural historians write using data "from below," but not generally demographic/quantitative data, but cultural artifacts (art, literature, journals, letters, buildings, music, etc.) in order to draw conclusions in a more specific way, and to prove a point but not to make large political statements or form economic trajectories.

But as I said, the discussion left many adrift, including me. I was hoping to hear from the experts on the matter, and forgive me, but I didn't really. So--I've tried to clarify it for myself as written above. If you think I am way off base, please tell me, and tell me why!

Diego Rivera rip-off!

Yes, here it is, the painting I rushed for Art Hop. I suspect I will be making some changes before I varnish (needs another layer or two, and Shane's air gun needs a hose!), but no time to work on it at present:

Yom Kippur fast-breaking

Yesterday night, I went over to Friendly's for dinner (I'm currently commuting to UMass) and as you may also know, it was the end of Yom Kippur. It was well after dark, and I was all alone in the place until three neatly dressed young guys show up. They're breaking the fast; they said so to the waitress. She was a bit confused, though she mentioned she had Jewish roommates, and so the guys said, "oh, they're probably not good Jews!" And so they peruse the menus a bit longer, and here's what they order: bacon cheeseburgers, double-thick milkshake, chicken strips basket and ice cream! I was amused.

Readings: Maps of Time

Well, leave it to David Christian to depress me. And on the large scale, at that. Christian's book, Maps of Time is "Big History." And Big History seems to be the newest (and probably the largest) framework ever. The macro-history is a blending of history and science, which provides a big picture view of the history and trajectory of the world, from the big bang and formation of the universe, to present times--and expanding outward towards the future.

Just reviewing this book seems like an impossible task. Let's just say that the majority of the book is a scientific history of the Earth which includes the physics of universe formation, the geology of earth formation, the beginnings of life on earth, and ends by tracing prehistory and then history of humanity, all the while highlighting synchronicity and repeating themes in science and human behavior, prehistory and modern history. He's like the Steven Strogatz of history. It's an overwhelming thing to convey, and to expect to keep in your head. But it isn't this part of the book that depresses me.

I do, in fact, believe that everything is connected. This belief affects my worldview, my historical inclinations, and my personal interactions. I don't think it's a practical way of writing most histories, but that's sort of beside the point. It's Christian's "Futures" section that is causing me pain.

Christian begins the chapter by comparing us (humans) to the inhabitants of Rapa Nui/Easter Island, and not in a good way. I mean that evidence suggests that the humans who colonized the land stayed, knowing there were limited resources, and still systematically destroyed all their resources and, in doing so, even their ability to escape the island. He writes that the generation who felled the last trees on the island in order to transport those giant stones knew what they were getting into, and still didn't stop the process. And here we are, on this tiny planet, doing the same damn thing.

Well, if that weren't enough to drive you to despair, Christian continues ever forward. He suggests what might become of humans in the next several thousands of years, and then moves on to what will happen when true Venusian global warming overcomes the earth and the sun turns into a white dwarf. And then what happens to the solar system and the galaxy, as they heat, cool and die. And finally, what of the universe? Most scientists have ruled out the 'big gnab' (I mean the reversal of the bang, of course) and agree that the universe will continue to expand, cool, and entropy will increase until the universe is a junkyard of cold matter. Eventually, no new stars will form and no energy will be present, matter will collapse into black holes which will evaporate and finally, no matter will exist around 10^10^76 years after the big bang.

So, why write history? Why do anything? Why did I read this book when I could have been reading a jolly good Wilkie Collins story?

Two swell movies, and one mediocre

I don't have cable up in Milton, so last weekend's trip to Amherst supplied me with the first viewing of TCM I've had in years! I saw two good movies: "Grapes of Wrath" (the 1940 one, of course) and "Tokyo Joe," (1949) with Humphrey Bogart and Sessue Hayakawa (he was the featured star that night). Oh, and I also saw "The Farmer Takes a Wife" with a very, very young Henry Fonda, which was just goofy, but what are you going to do? Don't you prefer the Erie Canal to a farm?! Only if you've seen this movie will that sentence not seem like a non-sequitur.

Now, lots of people have seen "Grapes of Wrath," so I won't comment at length, but seeing it was a good reminder of what is fine filmmaking. And oh-so-timely. Also, I felt a little guilty about complaining about losing capital on the house. After all, I've never been bludgeoned by union busters or had my farm plowed under. And I was pleasantly surprised by Casy, who I felt I recognized, and for good reason: he was played by John Carradine. The scene near the end when Casy is explaining why he could no longer be a preacher--it took my breath away.

But--I found "Tokyo Joe" rather more fun--even though it was clear 10 minutes into the movie that it could not possibly end well. It features a real-honest-to-goodness "postethnic" moment (re: my last post) when, while the Japanese insurgent/mobster/criminal is being interrogated in Japanese, the [Asian-American] interrogator stops, sighs, and says something like, "I just don't get these goofy Orientals!"

"Tokyo Joe," is pretty fair to the Japanese in this postwar drama--Bogart goes back to Japan to resurrect a nightclub he was forced to leave during the war . . . and after having fought, he returns to find his old buddy Ito (Teru Shimada) tending the bar, and they have a good old judo session to renew the friendship. Of course, an old wife of his (now remarried) re-enters the picture, and some shady business besides, and you know Bogey is going to have to die. But not before saying the one dated line in the whole movie; something about the American presence in Japan being there so that the people will be able to "stand up on their hind legs" against oppressive leaders. So, I cringed of course, but smiled a little too, on the inside. I am, after all, a great believer in American democracy.

By the way, nobody steal that line about "Tokyo Joe" being postethnic! It's going in my book.

Readings: Postethnic America

David Hollinger's Postethnic America seemed an appropriate follow-up to the last reading, as the two works reference one another, and Hollinger's idea appears to flow quite naturally from the [Roediger's] idea of "whiteness studies," which documents how varied European and Middle-eastern "races" came to be considered generically white (only sometimes, as I pointed out before). Hollinger's book is more fascinating reading (shall I say more provocative?) than Roediger's--for an experienced historian. While presumably Roediger is writing to a lay audience, Hollinger is writing to a community of historians, sociologists and ethnographers, in a work that straddles the boundaries of historiography and sociology.

The first part of the book, already 14 years old, covers some familiar ground, though the way he writes it is more interesting. For example, as he talks about Americans' conscious and unconscious choices of "ethno-racial blocs" he writes that Alex Haley's choice (to seek out his African roots as opposed to his Irish ones) is no choice at all--although I think in the intervening years between Roots and now, Haley's choice has become a significantly more real one. Hollinger also (thankfully) talks a little about the different perceptions of ethnicity from the distinctly racial pentagon to a more complex and detailed approach. While it's true that in some situations, people from one "ethno-racial bloc" will not notice or care about the finer distinctions in another, I happen to think no sensitive or intelligent person would fail to try. Do I care about the difference between Dominican and Puerto Rican? Of course! Or about Abenaki vs. Miwok? Sure!

What really grabs you in this book is Hollinger's attempt to trace multiculturalism from its roots (emerging somewhat oddly out of post WWII universalist perspectives) to current (mid-90s) academic infighting about how we should understand or express our multiculturalism, having eschewed ethnocentrism and universalism almost completely. He outlines the universalist concept, and then the emerging "paradigmatic" concept of history (creating a huge objectivity question in the field) and then the beginnings of multiculturalism, coinciding perhaps, with relativism. Hollinger tracks Richard Rorty's progression through stages and incarnations of multiculturalism through to the '90s, effectively showing the sometimes comical twists and turns of the academic perspective as we try to do the right thing by our multiple cultures.

Universalism, the new multiculturalists wrote, was a manifestation of our own Western (and possibly even American) ethnocentrist perspective, and therefore even the hopeful remarks about being one human family that shares the same struggles and emotions are, in fact, false. This led, in the extreme case, to historians, anthropologists and others taking the opposite view--and concluding that we cannot impose our Western/Judeo-Christian ideas of human rights on other cultures. Taken to its full extreme, it creates ethical problems for those of us concerned with the health and quality of life of other human beings, to say nothing of liberty (which, while perhaps a Western idea, has over 5000 years of historical strength as a desired state of being.)

Complicating matters are the cosmopolitan and the pluralist movements before and around multiculturalism, which ask the question, "how do we determine the many groups which are either making up the whole, or which continue to be un-unified parts?" Hollinger's idea of a postethnic society is one where all categories, layers and aspects of identity are in question--and given equal weight. "Consciously and critically locating oneself amid these layers," where everyone has a choice as to how they identify themselves, and without external identification. Rather than wanting to eliminate ethno-identity, Hollinger hopes that ethnicity can be boundary-less, multifaceted, and part of a much larger and more complex picture. Interestingly, this has some of the positive aspects of universalism, combined with a modern interpretation of the cultural pluralist thread.

Hollinger addresses the potential problems innate in the pursuit of a postethnic world, fairly eloquently, and a 2000 postscript was added, tracking some of the changes in thought about multiculturalism and the US at the end of the century. I think--I think!--that in the last nine years, America has made that much more progress towards a non-racial perspective--not because of policy changes, different phrasing of census questions, changes in affirmative action, or anything else like this--but simply because the composition of the United States is changing. The number of "mixed" relationships and blended backgrounds, families with multiple ancestral origins, adoptions outside a specific group, and people who choose to be affiliated with groups that they have little or no blood-tie to--all these are areas of growth. If we continue to silence the undercurrent of hate (which does exist, sadly) perhaps in time that too will fade, like an unused, vestigial organ.

Readings: Roediger and Ehrenreich

I started my summer readings with a rereading of Novick's That Noble Dream, and first readings of David Roediger's Working Toward Whiteness, with a brief detour into Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed (not on the list, but which my mom was perusing for readings for her social justice class in the fall). Technically, another similarly titled Roediger book was on the list, but this was the one available here. Novick is an outlier and deserving of a full post so I will skip him for now. However, I was intrigued by the single blurb on the cover of Roediger's book, supplied by the Washington Post, "provocative." Well, I didn't find it terribly provocative--how's that for a provocative statement?

This doesn't mean I didn't find it a competent and readable history. It was. However, the concept of "whiteness studies" as a way of breaking the prevailing understanding of whiteness as a "norm," and the journey of Southern and Eastern European immigrants from "dark white" to "white" is not new to me. As a Californian, maybe, and a product of a parent and an historical moment concerned with ethnic origins, the sheer diversity within the category "white" has long been quite evident to me, and the origins and arrival times of various ethnic groups, along with the difficulties they faced--these stories have been with me since childhood. On top of European ethnic groups, California is also home to many Asian and South Asian ethnicities, "Black," African and Carribean ethnicities, and several indigenous groups as well. In the 70s and 80s, there was a lot of "roots" searching, and this phenomenon trickled down to schooling.

Added to this, I'm also aware that we're not living in a post-ethnic society for those deemed "white." While, on a form, a Croatian-, an Italian-, and an Irish-American may all select "white," that doesn't mean that there aren't people out there calling them "guinea," "mick" and who knows what else. There are. I've met them. And there are plenty of folks who still equate "Jew" with race or ethnicity, even though I do my best to make it clear that Judaism is a religion, and I feel strongly that that there are no "ethnic" Jews. And these things equate to a mild (or not so mild) racism, even if your term of choice is "ethnic." Some evidence (in an amusing and palatable form) can be seen in Gilbert Hernandez's comic Love and Rockets: A Rock 'n' Roll Headache from '89.

So you see it's not that I disagree with the premise of the book--Roediger is on the mark when he's speaking historically about transformations in ethnic groups arriving and living in America, and the parallel path of African-Americans, who did not have the benefit of being able to change race. But I would argue that only in some settings have certain groups effectively changed race. Another point that Roediger discusses, though it's not his main point, is the arbitrariness of the term "race." As I understand it, it is an unscientific term at best, and at worst it is a manipulation of perception. Percival Everett puts this quite well in Erasure when the character Monk talks about why society has deemed him "Black." If I felt an historical evaluation of the term "race" was the primary point of the book, and if it were written in the style of Frantz Fanon, then perhaps I would have called it "provocative."

Ehrenreich's book I also had ambivalent feelings about. I realize I am a late reader, but I'm sure it remains on reading lists everywhere. On one hand, it is an important bit of investigation, showing not only the near impossibility of rising out of the mire of minimum wage employment, and revealing the poor quality of life so many people have who are effectively "passing" for middle class. However, I felt a bit wary of someone who dips into blue collar life for a month or two, being myself someone who has been living a real honest-to-goodness blue collar life. And as my mom and I were talking about the book, we were both taken aback by some of Ehrenreich's own prejudices--she comes across as ageist, insensitive about Alzheimers patients (oddly, I thought) and at times irritatingly judgmental of people around her (which I noted that she sometimes admits to, in the writing).

We agreed that she's firmly within her own head, which makes this different from an ethnographer, or an historian, a novelist, or Studs Terkel--all of whom either make an attempt to be in someone else's head, or take the materials back to the subjects and say, "these were my impressions--am I on the mark?" There was a queer absence of follow-up with her coworkers--and I say this with the conviction that my coworkers will be lifelong friends, if they want it. At any rate, I'm sure that this book has raised some consciousnesses. But I wonder how many, as we struggle onward in the rising waters of low wages, unemployment, high rents, and outsourcing of jobs and industry to countries where we can exploit labor legally for peanuts.

Apocalyptic dreams

Okay, in the first I believe I was in a city--maybe Chicago, but not resembling any city I've actually visited. I guess I was there with my mom--maybe for a conference. At some point, I needed some item and headed for a big-box store (I don't know, maybe Wal-Mart--not because I ever go there, but because we were talking about it yesterday.) While looking for the item, I ran into 恺, and we talked for a minute, and then I saw John K., and we were talking when a large blast shattered the huge windows at the front of the store, and icy gusts of rain and hail were blowing in. I stood there for a minute in wonder, but not really thinking about the cause. At that moment, for me, it was just an isolated incident. And then I realized that this was a symptom of something much bigger. Perhaps a terrific storm that was going to destroy everything in its wake. John screamed (sorry John, just a dream) and I grabbed his hand and we ran for a bit--away--and when I looked at my cell-phone there was no service.

We stopped somewhere safe (I'm sure there were lots of people milling about in confusion still) and I pulled out a map, and we were looking at these territories (which I can't now name, but it was not local counties or states or anything recognizable). John and I talked about which place would be the safest to travel to, and then I realized I had a cell signal again, and I either called or received a call from mom, which said she would meet us at the hotel. She seemed less alarmed, and I said to John, I guess you can come with me to the hotel, or head on by yourself. And then I woke up, briefly.

When I fell back asleep, I dreamed I was wandering around some town or city, doing something innocuous, when I saw a group of goggled people leaving a theater, and I followed them. They seemed to be in varying stages of blindness, or something similar, and they seemed to be moving under duress. Somehow I became part of the group--and part of a subgroup of new people. The new people were not yet blind. We arrived at what I perceived as a prison/dormitory made from a converted building of some other type. The place itself was not unpleasant, but the imprisonment or internment was clear, as was I guess the hopelessness for the future. I saw everyone else getting settled in their rooms, and then I found 'mine;' it was not in my name, but someone else's. And then I woke up

Uncle Silas and Cambodia

Well, I got sacked again! Not enough work. But this leaves me some extra time to fix the house, which is slowly getting improved for sale: new tile in the bathroom, new light fixtures inside and out, stained cabinetry and ceiling trim, finished tin ceiling, repainting, new cabinet handles, plants weeded, etc... Also, I'm getting a lot of non-required reading done now, as I imagine my fall reading will be a combination of histories, historiography and student papers.

The two I just finished are in no way connected. Uncle Silas is a Victorian gothic thriller (not really a 'mystery,' as it is billed) by J. Sheridan LeFanu. And Cambodia: A book for people who find television too slow, by Brian Fawcett, is a work of 'fiction' which reads like a combination of personal essay and social commentary. I enjoyed Silas, but I fell in love with Cambodia.

Uncle Silas is very much in the vein of Ann Radcliffe's work, such as The Mysteries of Udolpho, and in fact the main character Maud mentions Radcliffe more than once. However, LeFanu is not prone to writing endless descriptions of the Pyrenees or inserting three pages of poetry, and so the work is 400 pages instead of 800 pages. LeFanu also jumps right into the mystery--but perhaps this is because 1860s readers had slightly less need of books that lasted through the entire winter months as perhaps Radcliffe's readers in the 1790s had need of? However, Radcliffe is more realistic in her portrayal of courtship, I think, and her scenes at Udolpho (with Count Montoni) are quite compelling--whereas the estate at Bartram-Haugh (and Silas himself) never reach the same level of hatefulness. It drove me nuts waiting for Emily to escape, but I didn't feel the same urgency for Maud until the very end.

One interesting character, Milly, is a new one to me: a young (16-18) lady of the upper classes who has been so neglected in her childhood that she has read nothing, speaks like a 'dairy-maid' and runs freely around the estate, giving people cheeky nicknames and trespassing on neighboring properties. Some of the characters in Uncle Silas are followers of Swedenborg, and while I originally got the feeling that this was supposed to cast suspicion upon them, in fact (luckily for Swedenborgians) both Bryerly and Austin Ruthyn are blameless in the novel. I'd say this is a great book to read beside the fireplace in the dead of winter, with a cup of hot chocolate and a kitty on your lap.

And Cambodia: A book for people who find television too slow, by the Canadian author Fawcett, was totally unexpected. First of all, it changed the way I define fiction. Fawcett's stories combine the essay form, history, commentary on recent news and events, conversations with dead people, speculations or hypothetical situations, detailed explanations of the mundane functions of bureaucracy, conversations with friends and personal experiences. And they are incredibly compelling, sometimes funny, and often chilling. And on the bottom third of every page in a smaller font is an essay about Cambodia (written around 1985 about the events, mostly post-Vietnam, leading up to the Khmer Rouge regime, the Khmer Rouge, and then the subsequent Vietnamese invasion--and also about the western response and portrayal of these events.)

At the very beginning and throughout, Fawcett is suspicious of, and maybe disdainful of 'subtext,' the 'global village' and other such burgeoning concepts of the '80s. He writes about the inherent divisions between the academic 'in the know' and all others, and the growing loss of personal political involvement, the uselessness of the bureaucratic decision-making process, the lack of national memory for events like the Kent State protest/shooting, and the way globalization (perhaps in its current/capitalist form) is detrimental to many (most?). And what I assume are some personal details sneak their way in... in "The Fat Family Visits the Fair," his friend Howard (to all appearances a real person) ends up 'creating' the (non-existent) Cambodia pavilion at the World's Fair, and subsequently commits suicide. And the abruptness and reality of it hit me like a sandbag. I was knocked over.

If this is fiction--and he says it is--have I been playing it wrong. And I thought: where has this been?--why haven't I seen this before? I can't sit here and describe the stories. They pack a much better punch when you just read them. So, just read them!


Rice farmers (mew)