Late April in Vermont

This was Milton, VT, a few days ago:



Followed by a thunderstorm, apparently. It's been warm here in Turners, though.

The Room in le Dragon Volant

"'What is my religion?' I asked.
'A beautiful heresy,' answered the oracle instantly.
'A heresy?--and pray, how is it named?'
'Love.'"

From In a Glass Darkly by J. Sheridan LeFanu

Belchertown State School

Inspired as I was by a discussion about the now closed Belchertown State School for the Feeble-Minded (an institution not known for its humane treatment of people), I decided to take a trip over to Belchertown today to see the campus. I managed to get inside a few buildings (I only poked my head into the asbestos-ridden ones, and got into another one rather sneakily). It was kind of thrilling to be on the wrong side of the law. On the other hand, I was really nervous the whole time I was inside--I guess because I was alone, and I wasn't sure who might be squatting there. Anyway, here are some pictures:


Stairs inside an administrative or educational building


Moody indoor shot


Don't go in--asbestos!

While I was there, I ran into a woman who worked there in the 70s, who was walking with her daughter (the daughter was working on a photo project). She told me a little about her experiences there, and what she remembered/didn't remember. So it seemed to me that at least some people treat it like a ruin, or a memory site. Because the expenditure would be too great to do asbestos remediation on the buildings for adaptive reuse--and probably an equal expenditure would have to be made just to tear the buildings down--the place just sits. And I kind of like it that way. Nothing too horrible can happen there, I think, given that it's right next to the police station. Though obviously they don't patrol the area, because I was able to get into the buildings without being caught. But most of the people there during the daytime were quiet and reverent. I guess I wouldn't like to be there at night, when apparently the skinheads come to write graffiti.

The meaning of life

One day on the jobsite Doug asked Seth and me,
“what is the meaning of life?”
and I said, “work is the meaning of life,”
and Seth said, “I’m not sure I agree with that.”
I would have added, “love, too, of course,”
but there are just some things you don’t say at work.

Down by the mills

So, it seemed like a good afternoon to do some exploring: just chilly enough for a jacket and tuque, overcast with a slight mist of rain, quiet on the streets. I decided to walk down to the abandoned mill on the Connecticut river, in Turners Falls. I was alone, and in one sense, that was nice. When you're taking a walk alone through a post-industrial landscape, it gives you a little sense of adventure, allows your mind to wander, and you're free to just take in the crumbling beauty (or the beautiful crumbling, perhaps) of what sometimes seems like a post-apocalyptic town. But on the other hand, it would have been nice to share it with someone, too--to walk through the damp leaves by the river bank, looking for a possible homeless encampment on the other side of the river. But I took some pictures so I can share it with you now. Here is the view while crossing the bridge over the diversion of the Connecticut River, called the Power Canal:


Power Canal (mew)

The water is always high here, just as it always seems to be quite low in the river. I'm still not sure how clean the Connecticut River it, but I assume not very clean. So, perhaps no swimming when summer comes. But right now, it's got that late-winter beauty, hibernating. I walked on and came to a lovely mill in decay. It reminded me a little of the coal town in Oliver's Travels, which he says is in government Category D: do nothing.


Category D (mew)

Here is a close-up of two of the windows on the mill. I seem always to have a picture like this, no matter what the location. I must like the symmetry of two windows in the frame:


Two mill windows (mew)

I walked on, saw from the other side just how much of the interior of the mill had collapsed. Once the roof is compromised, the inside of the building seems to go rather quickly. And what's left is the exterior shell of brick. It's masonry that lasts, just like the ancient castles and abbeys in England, the ones you can go wandering around, communing with the stones. Why not do that here? Take away the fence, and clear the rubble and danger from the center, and then let lush grass grow all around and inside. An old mill as the American ruin. About 50 yards past the ruins, I came across a piece of inscrutable graffiti:


MonkyTurkey (mew)

At last, I came to the river. In fact, this was part of the reason for my expedition. Earlier, I had seen the person who dresses in a suit made entirely of plastic bags stopped on the side of the road coming into town from Greenfield. Her bicycle was parked on the side of the road, and she was partway down the hill towards the river. Perhaps she stops there out of necessity, of course, but I also thought she might have some kind of shelter there as well, and it occurred to me that if there was one, I could see it from the other side of the river. So, I picked my way through the leaves, acorns and coal clinkers strewn about, with the light mist growing a little stronger against my face. After much searching, I could not find any sort of encampment. However, I did spot this strange looking tree. And then I headed home.


Tree by the river (mew)

The moving target

You were a moving target
and I the arrow, embedded.
You always liked to drive--
when you were angry you'd
drive all night from Sacramento
to Salt Lake City, have breakfast
and drive back home. Of course,
home was wherever you were.
It was where you worked.

One morning I stumbled out of you
while you were downstate working.
I was drunk with new life, and I
was born on the move.
What emerged from necessity
flowered into beauty.
I have always loved the freeway,
the salty desert, the faded motel.
A place that the wind might sweep up
and carry away at any moment.

When I get up in the morning,
on my way to work I think:
"I'm just going to keep driving."
In a few hours I'll be somewhere entirely new,
a place free of the weights of the past.
And in a few days I'll be somewhere old,
a place that brings tears unaccountably.
I'll slip that old tape in the deck
and feel the waves of memory
crash around my head like a breakwater.

Sometimes I drive all night,
looking for something, and then
coming home in the darkness I see
two points of light, inexplicable, unwavering.
Two lanterns holding fast
though you'd expect the inky night
to wash them both away.

A couple of days in Chicago

The old neighborhood (mew)


Downtown (mew)


Wells St., Spade and Archer (mew)

Just a city poem

I’m in a strange city. As I emerge from the trainyard, with the tracks stretching ahead and behind me, I’m looking for a landmark, a destination. Nothing is familiar, yet everything is familiar: long blocks of masonry and cornices, long blocks of Lustron and glass block, long blocks of signs and parked cars, long blocks of streetcar rail and cable in the air, disappearing beyond a turn in the boulevard. Nothing seems new, not the buildings, not the dusty road, not the signs or the cars, not even the derelict men lingering and shuffling at the corners. They don’t see me.

I’m running. Fear’s not why I’m running. It’s just that sometimes I feel the need to move fast, to beat it across the pavement, to get somewhere. Only I’m not getting anywhere. I’m on one side of the boulevard, flat and long and dusty. Sepia, almost. Particulate permeating the air. The boulevard has a diagonal turn, an elbow. As I pass it, all I can see is more and more and more city stretching on and on ahead. I run past one striking building, its name immortalized in blue and white tile above the entrance. One landmark in a sea of faceless edifices.

It has no name, this city, and there’s no one here I know. I’m looking for you in the reflections of the shop windows, in the windows of the streetcars as they shudder down the road, in the faces of the walkers as they brush past me on the sidewalk. I stop and stand still for a moment, turning ‘round, breathless, lost. Lost in beautiful decay, its living heart pulsing beneath its deceptive surface. Here I am. I don’t know where I stand. Find some way of telling me.

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!