The following is from Bob Ginsberg, an occasional commenter on NewGathering:
I have mentioned before my concern that Americans are turning against history. And now it seems, against historical study, too.
An article in the Daily Beast (of all places!) tells the distressing tale of how the number of undergraduates getting degrees in history is plummeting. One reason may be the perception that there are no jobs, though the belief that college is meant to provide only a route to a job is also a very depressing. Here is a brief excerpt:
Knowledge of the past provides young people with a sense of place and a concept of temporal continuity, lessons to apply to the present and future, an interpretive framework and perspective for navigating the choppy global world.
An epidemic of historical amnesia already plagues this country, which has often paid a terrible price and done grave harm to other foreign people and lands due to its ignorance of the past.
I notice on the AHA chart that "Exercise Science" degrees are up more than 50 percent since 2011 while History was dropping 34%. Somehow, if you know exercise is up among the self-regarding millennials, you will not be surprised to know that history is down.
ReplyDeleteOf course, if you listen to the Authorized Standard History of the USA as taught by the Tea Party and Fox, you know this country was founded by a bunch of god-fearing men (yes, dammit, men) who wanted a government that supports the church and morality and has no use for people who think otherwise. I have seen the genuine painting of Washington on his knee praying for guidance at Valley Forge. Every since Lynne Cheney got her mitts all over the history standards in the 1990s, history has been "controversial," a battleground. Touchy. Touchy.
And, anyway, STEM -- science, technology, engineering and math -- is the goal of vocational education, formerly know as "academia" (how quaint). Ask any Republican governor.
Our older son has a degree in history. Regrettably, we tried to talk him out of that and into a STEM major. We had visions of him still living in our basement at age 35. Fortunately he marches to his own drummer and didn't listen to our advice. He has a career in the financial sector with a large online brokerage. They wanted people with "a degree". To advance in that world you have to pass a series of exams. I suppose having even an unrelated degree proves at least that you have the ability for independent study and passing hours long exams. And no, he never lived in our basement after graduation.
DeleteKatherine, I know the son of a friend who got his degree in philosophy. He's now a manager in a software firm. Does your son still have an interest in history? I wish our president had a degree in history.
DeleteStanley, yes, he's still interested in history. And a lot of other things. And I don't say that people shouldn't be STEM majors. But they should do it for the right reasons; that it's a fit for their interests and abilities.
DeleteThe demise of Civics classes and now History classes will ensure that Making AmuriKKKa Rampantly Ignorant Agin by the Asshat in Chief will work.
DeleteGreenleaf in Servant Leadership expressed well the relationship of history to leadership:
ReplyDelete“The prudent person is one who constantly thinks of now as the moving concept in which past, present moment, and future are one organic unity. And this requires living by a sort of rhythm that encourages a highly level of intuitive insight about the whole gamut of events from the indefinite past, through the present moment, to the indefinite future. One is at once, in every moment of time, historian, contemporary analyst, and prophet –not three separate roles. This is what the practicing leader is, every day of his or her life.”
"One is at once, in every moment of time, historian, contemporary analyst, and prophet –not three separate roles." Interesting concept. Wish we had some servant leaders.
DeleteJack, Great insight. I know I already went long here, but I failed to get to another downside, accompanied by an anecdote. If history, in general -- you know, Alexander Hamilton and the 19th amendment and all that -- is anti-magnetic, I imagine the STEMheads are not attending much to the history of their own areas of expertise. Some of my favorite courses were histories of journalism (major), psychology (minor) and philosophy (fun).
DeleteISTM I spent a good portion of my life unsuccessfully explaining to enforcers of bright ideas why their ideas didn't work the last time some bright guy tried them.
There was a Purdue physics grad in my unit in the Army when we were in Germany and the government decided to put Max Planck on the 1-DM coin. I said to the Boilermaker: "I see they decided to honor one of yours."
"Who?"
"Max Planck."
"Who?"
"You know, Max Planck. Quantum physics. Nobel Prize. Planck's constant -- h."
"Oh. We use h sometimes."
And he wasn't even a millennial.
Tom, I think your physicist acquaintance was rather atypical. Most of us with undergrad physics degrees end up doing engineering. But even the young 'uns I met in my consulting years had an interest in the personalities and historical development of physics. Of course, it varies from casual to fanatical. Also, Physics Today Magazine always has one history article. Of course, those who studied engineering alone didn't seem to care about the history of their fields.
DeleteStanley. Purdue. What could you expect from a school that calls itself the Boilermakers and thinks it is talking about making large metal objects?
DeleteI was a history major and glad I was. I learned a lot about the ancient world, ancient Israel, the medieval world (William of Occam!), some about the Renaissance, a lot about the Explorers!, about colonial American, and U.S., some about modern Europe. Equally important, I learned to write.
ReplyDeleteI wish I could say I foresaw what a great choice it was, but I chose it by a process of elimination. Dismissed math and science out of hand, though I could have stuck with biology as long as it was about trees and plants. Rejected English because I could see it would ruin my love of reading. Loved philosophy, but you ended up with a minor anyway at LU in the sixties because there was a required course every semester; ditto theology, which was predictably awful (really!). All of that, great preparation for writing editorials and other stuff.
What I love is you can go right on studying History, and I do. My WW1 reading group has been informative, interesting, and a source of obvious Christmas presents (My son-in-law gave me "Pandora's Box: A History of the First World War," by Jorn Leonhard (910 pp.--the winter is long).
Off subject: Tom Blackburn some months back reported reading "The Source: How Rivers Made American and America remade its Rivers" by Martin Doyle. Terrific read! Well-written. Everything you'd want to know about water and what to do with it.
"Rejected English because I could see it would ruin my love of reading."
DeleteEnglish majoring didn't do that to me. But, then, I was always pretty subversive. I loved studying, and paleography always appealed to me. But despite the advanced degree in medieval hagiography, I always knew I was going to be more at home with a six pack at a euchre tournament than eating runny cheese at some high-toned party with a bunch of English profs.
I read Stephen King and Charlie Huston vampire books, and I'm not afraid to admit it.
Margaret, Glad you liked Martin Doyle. Sometimes my enthusiasms fall flat when other people try to share them.
DeleteThere was grumbling in my non-fiction group when it came to the top of the list. But now! some enthusiasm has emerged for the sheer factfulness (also covers a lot of history of engineering, financing, and government at all levels). The Chicago Sanitary District was obviously an ingenuous way to raise funds for keeping the water clean and moving--and I bet a lot of jobs to boot. Now know what a sanitary engineer does; as a kid I thought they fixed the sanitary tubs in the basement where the wash water went..live and learn.
DeleteOur meeting is next Monday. Will let you know if the grumblers have changed their views.
I was an econ major, the least practical of all the business disciplines, at least as offered at Loyola's School of Business.
ReplyDeleteNowadays it's the Somebody-Or-Other School of Business and I believe they've dropped the economics major. I wonder if economics majors are as much of an endangered species as history majors.
I took a history course in college for the time-honored reason that it was a requirement to be granted my degree. I also took theology, philosophy (not as much of either as Peggy), English, anthropology, political science, and other liberal arts and social sciences courses I'm probably not recalling now, all because Loyola had a core curriculum that mandated that even the uber-practical business majors get exposed to ideas in a broad variety of fields. At the risk of being a walking Jesuit-education promotional billboard, those required liberal arts courses were the most memorable ones I took, and I second Peggy's motion that being able to write and to think clearly have stood me in good stead in the practical world of earning a living.
I have amongst my progeny a graduate of Loyola and another of De Paul, neither with liberal arts degrees, and both had similar sample-the-liberal-arts requirements to graduate. One of them really liked the liberal arts (in my opinion, she should have majored in one of them, rather than in STEM - that's a whole 'nother topic); the other, who really is quite arts-and-literature-oriented in her personal life, saw those required courses as distractions and hoops to jump through on the way to her degree, which is education.
I have one in college now, an engineering major, at a land grant university with no core curriculum requirements, and who will amaze me if he takes any liberal arts courses.
My own line of thought as an undergrad was that courses that required a lot of reading and a lot of writing were to be avoided if possible, because college is a lot of work just ploughing through the courses for one's major. I suspect history falls short there. It wasn't until I was a senior that I figured out that all college courses are a lot of work, and if it's not reading and writing, it's some other kind of work (homework problems, group projects, etc.), and people should study what interests them and/or what they love.
Kids and their college choices. One of the biggest arguments my daughter (visual arts major) and I ever had was her refusal to take a course on Europe and the Black Death (she was taking a course on Japanese monuments in that time slot!). Black Death: one of the pivotal events in European history...bigger than the 1918 flu epidemic!! Japanese monuments!!?? you can always look them up in a book.
DeleteShe's a great person anyway...just a little uninformed about the Black Death!
Yeah, but she knows more than all of us combined about Japanese monuments.
DeleteLucky Ducky!!
DeleteI would rather study the Black Death than Japanese monuments, but I tend to morbid interests. But, wait, were these Japanese death monuments? Japanese funerary customs are pretty interesting ...
DeleteI thought book sales for the last 20 years or so have illustrated that history, at least in the form of biographies of Great Americans, is quite popular with the general public? The theater phenomenon that is Hamilton is based on one of those books. Ken Burns and PBS have operated on the principle that history is both important and interesting. These observations further complicate the thesis of the article; it is possible that what is unpopular is not history per se, but majoring in history?
ReplyDeleteI think that those types of popular history presentations are great, and I'm glad people enjoy them.
DeleteBut somebody still needs to study historiography, to apply new historical methods to flesh out our knowledge of the past, and to know how to corroborate and weigh the veracity of the historical record.
If you want to see how poorly the average joe "does history," ask people what they know about their own families. And don't get me started on Ancestry.com
Real historical investigation is definitely part of the human enterprise. Like Jack said, it is indispensable for charting future courses. I consider myself to have learned the factual skeleton of history in school. But who were the screwers and screwees, that required further study. But what's with the fascination with the %#$&ing Vikings?
DeleteDid you know the Vikings founded Dublin? And perhaps Gdansk?
DeleteVikings, they're the prototype barbarians, at least in the popular imagination. Guys who watched all the barbarian movies; who wouldn't love to have some real life ones on the family tree? Enthusiasm was probably not shared by the ones who were pillaged and plundered. There was a line from a litany which read, "From the fury of the North Men, O Lord deliver us." Probably in Gaelic or Anglo Saxon.
DeleteYes, remember almost all we used to know about the Vikings came from the Irish. If all we knew about the English came from the Irish, POTUS wouldn't take Mrs. Mays's calls.
DeleteWhat's the fascination with the Vikings?
DeleteAnglo-Saxon priests used to warn women away from their pagan charms. These guys traveled with combs, brushes, and little key ring things that held nail and ear cleaning implements. They took a lot of saunas and baths. Apparently the appeal was better hygiene than your homegrown churl. Plus what guy doesn't look good in a leather tunic?
I gotta wonder if those Irish ladies the Vikings supposedly kidnapped to take to Iceland maybe couldn't get on the boat fast enough ...
Jean: Apparently the appeal was better hygiene than your homegrown churl...I gotta wonder if those Irish ladies the Vikings supposedly kidnapped to take to Iceland maybe couldn't get on the boat fast enough ...
DeleteLove it. Thanks, Jean, you always come through.
As one of the millions of Americans descended at least in part from the Irish, I took a lot of interest in Irish history when I was young, and was terribly proud of the term paper I wrote on Ireland when I was in 7th or 8th grade. (in the days when term papers were common in middle and high school, less common these days).
Not all the Vikings captured the fair Irish ladies and headed for colder climes. They went maurauding there and elsewhere along the British and European coasts to get away from colder climes, after all, because they had trouble growing enough food. They needed farmland and a longer growing season during that era, one of global cooling. Many stayed in Ireland, took Irish wives and, from what I read, the red hair that is associated with many Irish (including my mother and her family), came from the Vikings who stayed in Ireland. They weren't all blonde and Eric the Red was not a one-off.
Vikings left.that red hair all over parts of Russia, too.
DeleteAccording to my Icelandic friends, more than half of the typical Icelander's DNA is Irish, an inconvenient truth for a nation whose Viking heritage is fiercely celebrated. There were periods of plague throughout Icelandic history, and the theory is that those with Irish DNA had more immunity.
Icelandic folktales about elves and the "hidden people" also seem more Irish than Norse to me, but that's not my area of expertise.
I would like to read Michael Pye's, "Edge of the World," about the cultural history of the people in the North Sea.
Didn't the Irish also discover America? A fellow named Brendan/Brennan/Danny Boy? landed in Jamestown before there was a Jamestown.
DeleteMargaret, for shame. Pretending you don't know Brendan of Clonfert (AD 484?-587?), who found a famous island all the learned people of 1,000 years ago would have known about. Yes, there is a didactic quality to his account of his Voyages. But Samuel Eliot Morrison -- who was about as Establishment as it could get in the 1940's-50's -- gave serious consideration to, and didn't rule out, the possibility that the good saint got to Newfoundland. When I read that chapter in Morrison's "North American Voyages," I remember thinking "Wow."
DeleteI think I read that paragraph. But wait! Isn't Newfoundland part of Canada...? What about Jamestown before Jamestown.
DeleteWas St. Brendan's voyage meant to be taken literally?
DeleteDanny Boy. In a few weeks it will be time to start my annual quest for the schlockiest version on YouTube to send to my friends on St. Patrick's Day.
Aren't all Irish stories to be taken literaturely?
DeleteI wouldn't take them any other way.
DeleteI knew about Dublin. Not about Gdansk though it doesn't surprise me. I'm sure there's a lot more interesting things to learn about them but whenever I see a trailer for the History Channel with big, hairy, nasty. armored and armed guys, I think it's for males who should join a fight club and get it out of their system.
ReplyDeleteThey forget that for half the year, those guys were iced in (unless they were on an extended trade mission in warmer climes). During the down time, they were doing a lot of real nice woodworking and art for the home. Maybe making some jewelry for the missus. Like this: https://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2013/07/viking-jewelry-unearthed-in-denmark.html
DeleteI know a Viking, Norwegian dual citizen actually. Add some of the Hollywood accoutrements and he'd look the part. But, seeing this nice guy, I guess the jewelry making part won out. Look at their pacifistic reaction to the island massacre.
DeleteJim: I was an econ major, the least practical of all the business disciplines, ...
ReplyDeleteAs you know, most of my career was in economics. I had no idea of a major when I started college, and we had a lot of requirements, so few declared a major before second semester of sophomore year or the first semester of junior year.
Among the requirements was having to complete 12 units of both theology and philosophy. Since the courses were mostly (or maybe all) 2 credit courses, that meant 6 semesters of theology and 6 semesters of philosophy. There were also science requirements, history, fine arts, literature etc.
It was a history class that got me interested in economics - The History of Latin American Economic Development. I was fascinated, especially by how the various forms of economic and political systems and policies impacted different countries.
In those days at my undergrad college, economics was not particularly quantitative - the emphasis was on policy. Later, when I went to Georgetown for grad work in economics, I focused on international economics, and especially on the economic development of what were then called "less-developed countries". By then math and statistics were becoming more important, so I had to take and pass a calculus course (would never have made it without my husband the engineer tutoring me through it), and two semesters of econometrics. I did not like the quantitative focus though, still preferring what was once called "political economy". I worked full-time during grad school as, of all things, a computer programmer/analyst in the very early days before colleges had even developed Computer Science courses and majors. New college grads were given a test of logic ability (I took logic in college as philosophy) and major didn't matter at all. This was IBM, and they were recruiting new college grads by the carload. I got the job without even knowing exactly what a computer programmer did. They sent us through 3 months of full-time training at full-pay. But, I didn't like being a programmer/analyst, so decided to go back to school. I worked in the daytime and took classes at night.
Washington DC is a good place to be for someone interested in international and development economics. My first job in the field was at the World Bank - my dream job. I couldn't believe I was actually getting paid to do it, I loved it so much. Besides third world development, I became immersed in a broader range of international economics.
I left that job when my first son was born. After 4 years as a full-time mom, I was a tiny bit bored. My sons (2 sons by then) were simply not a bit interested in discussing what happened at the latest G7 meeting. So I launched my freelance career - it was part-time until the later years, when the youngest was in high school and the older two in college, and it suited me perfectly. I worked mostly from home, but had enough in-person interaction with clients and colleagues for refreshing intellectual boosts in between running carpools and doing my mom thing after they got home from school.
I now wish I had taken more history in college, but I didn't appreciate college when I was there. I started at barely 17, and not an especially mature 17, and looked at college primarily as a time to make good friends, have some fun, and be out from under my mother's overly-watchful eye. I really never gave much thought to a career, including economics. I just took courses I liked, and was interested in, and mostly that was economics. I fell into a major.
I would give a lot to be able to go back today and re-do the theology and philosophy classes (the only one I liked was Plato), as well as take more history.
Anne, that is so interesting! I am happy that you were able to make it work for you, personally and professionally.
DeleteI think I've written about this before: my econ professors urged me to pursue graduate work, but they warned me that it would be extremely quantitative - econometrics ruled at that time (or so I was told); professional economics was essentially a branch of applied mathematics. At that point, I had three calculus courses under my belt (one in high school and two in college - we had to take two math courses in order to graduate). So I took the next course up for a math minor, which I think was linear algebra, and basically washed out. Couldn't get it. Tried twice and never got it. Wish your husband had been around to help me :-) So I decided that career was a no-go. I sort of got bored with it, too, by the time I was a senior - some of the dismal-ness of the dismal science was starting to creep in.
I ended up falling into ... yes, computer programming. I really enjoyed it - it's both analytic and creative. I haven't programmed professionally for decades (didn't keep up with the technology), but my career has been in IT, one way or another, ever since. I'm a director now, basically overseeing teams of project managers.
Jim, the move to making economics almost purely quantitative is the reason I never finished the PhD. Once son #3 was born, I told Georgetown I would not be returning. They awarded me a Master's, which would not be possible now. It's also not possible to get any job in economics without a PhD. I'm not sure anyone offers a terminal Master's anymore. But the kind of economics I focused on is only a small part of the field these days, which is quantitative modeling and analysis.
DeleteWhen #3 was about 9, I looked into going back to finish the PhD. I had already been working freelance for several years with an excellent steady client, a client I landed just based on the Master's and coursework, and, most importantly, my World Bank experience and connections. But I wanted the PhD I thought. Unfinished business. However, I learned to my dismay that by then I would have had to take almost all math and econometrics courses with few options for the type of courses I had taken during the first part of the program. Georgetown would have allowed me to finish, but I decided not to. I had the type of work I wanted already, and throughout my career was able to get new clients through word of mouth.
I had enough calculus and econometrics to be able to understand what I read, but I didn't want to do the quantitative work myself. I was always much more interested in how different economic systems worked, or didn't work, in different cultures.
At one time development efforts were focused on huge infrastructure projects. Later the "Small is Beautiful" philosophy became prominent. Asia was lifted from poverty by adapting capitalism to their own cultures and competitive advantages, once the world had opened up trade and lifted restrictions on capital flows.
A friend of mine who retired from the World Bank a few years ago was in education. He is from Ireland, as it happens. He earned his PhD in the US (Michigan maybe??), and was lured back to the US from Ireland after 15 or so years to work at the World Bank. He worked primarily with countries like Bangladesh and in his later years at the Bank, the focus had not only turned to micro-loans, but to making educating women and girls a priority. (Strong cultural barriers there!) He told me that they had learned that they got the most bang for the buck in women's education, and that women very often were the best small entrepreneurs, creating thriving small businesses with the micro-loans.
What works in the US or Germany or Sweden obviously will not automatically work in an African or Latin American or Asian country. It took a while for this reality to get through to the development community (which really got started after WWII), but it finally did get through.
January 9, 2019 at 12:24 PM
When I was at Loyola in the biz school studying economics, I learned that there was another economics major on offer, from the School of Arts and Sciences. It was basically a branch of the philosophy department, as best as I could tell - I assume they read Adam Smith, Marx, Malthus et al. I don't think I ever met anyone who was actually one of those majors.
DeleteTrue story illustrating our national ignorance about history: Raber was talking yesterday to Some Guy at Work about illegal aliens. He mentioned that my family were illegals from Ireland who snuck in through Canada in the 1800s. The Guy said, "How did get Social Security numbers?"
ReplyDeleteI once attended a lecture at which a member of Congress talked about how his father came through Mexico (from Italy [don't ask!]) to the U.S. That was before the Immigration restrictions in 1924. I'm guessing he just walked across the Mexican border somewhere and made his way East. He probablygot his SS number like everyone else when FDR invented the idea.
DeleteAll of our ancestors who came before 1924 had to be free of TB, Small Pox, not obviously demented, etc. Don't think they had to be literate. Just enough money to get on a ship.
When in Dublin touristing, visited a "ship" that plyed trade between Canada and Ireland (Tress to Ireland; people to Canada). Ship was claustrophobic below decks...
Can't people still walk across the border from Canada? At least west of Lake Superior?
DeleteJean, one of my sisters is a Trump supporter. We don't interact very often these days and when we do, it is family business via email. She and her husband, both college educated were also very successful in their careers - they are millionaires, literally. They don't support Trump because they are struggling in a small town that lost its factory and the jobs that go with it. They are "east coast elites" - wealthy, college educated people. They support Trump because they have always been Republicans, always been conservative and seem unaware of the fact that Trump is not a conservative in the traditional sense (George Will, Michael Gerson, the Bushes etc). When they ran out of arguments based on their preference for conservative policies after it was pointed out that Trump opposes conservative policies like free trade etc, they pulled their "trump" card - abortion. They are devout, anti-Francis Catholics. Abortion was not the paramount concern during primaries though (they preferred Kasich); it only became so after it became Trump v. Hillary.
DeleteShe made a comment on Facebook that "Republicans aren't against immigration, they are only against illegal immigration. We are all descended from immigrants, but our ancestors came here legally".
I sent her an email reminding her of the realities of the time - the rules were limited to what Margaret reported. I pointed out that Trump's wife, mother and in-laws would not be accepted under the new legal immigration rules he is pushing. I also reminded her that they had employed a young woman from Mexico as a live-in housekeeper and nanny years ago when they lived in San Diego. They had celebrated her escape from a close call she had when her car was stopped near their home. Her nanny was the only one in the car without papers. After looking at the papers of several passengers they sent the car on its way without noticing that she hadn't given them any. My sister and her family loved Rita as part of their family. She eventually married, a Mexican professional (she was very pretty.) They returned to Mexico eventually and she has lived an upper-middle class life there because her husband had fallen in love with a poor girl from the peasant class and bucked his own family to marry her. I asked my sister to remember the human face of an undocumented immigrant they had lived with and considered family when they looked at what is happening now at the border. No reply of course.
I also reminded her that the Irish were not welcomed with open arms and included some quotes from an article entitled something like "When the Irish became White". I told her I didn't want to engage her publicly, on Facebook, so chose email instead. She never replied. The only time we have seen each other in person during the last 2+ years was at a family funeral, and she lives only 20 minutes away. I think the estrangement is permanent and is due primarily to my discomfort in being around her and my brother-in-law. They told us, before the election that they hadn't liked Clinton, but that Obama was much worse - Obama is "evil". They also think he is Muslim and that all Muslims are evil. They believed the conspiracy theories that Muslims were going to take over the US and impose sharia law. She was shocked to learn that that Muslims are only 1% of the Us population and had little chance of overthrowing our government and taking over. I suppose you can guess what TV station they watch for news.
Don't bother them with the facts. or with history, as you pointed out. I have learned, finally, and the hard way, not to bother trying to present facts to those who simply don't want to know them. They prefer their "alternative facts" to the truth.
Anne, my dad has a saying, that "...talking to some people is like putting a note down a prairie dog hole." I have dear friends and family members who are exactly like you describe your sister and brother in law. I figured out a long time ago that it was futile to try and change their minds. I view it similar to people to people who get involved in a whacky fundamentalist church. You're never going to win arguing evolution with a young earth creationist. I don't talk politics with them, I ask them about their families, and block the political stuff on Facebook. I still love them the same, but have lost respect for their reasoning abilities. We still have one another's backs in the ways that count. I can't cut them out of my life because it would be too lonely. Trump and present day politics aren't going to last forever. We've let them win if they can even divide us from people we love.
DeleteMargaret, yes, vast swaths of "unprotected" border with Canada West of here. Lord knows what evil doings are going on out there. Brisk trade in contraband butter tarts, maybe.
DeleteIf the oral stories in my family are correct, my Irish ancestors probably had no idea they were not legal. They were quarantined at some type of place run by nuns--they said it was Montreal Island--because there had been cholera on the ship (when was there not?). They planned to work their way through lumber camps to the Irish settlements in northern Michigan, which they did. There, they would have just blended in with other Irish people.
The census records shows that sometimes they said they were born in in the U.S., and sometimes in Ireland, but the line for naturalization was always left blank. They died before the arrival of Social Security.
One of my English relatives and his brother got here by taking a ship across Lake Erie. I bet they didn't need no stinkin' papers. The ghost of one of them still haunts a tavern they owned in Canada.
DeleteIf I can't go to heaven, I hope I get to haunt a tavern. Or maybe haunting a tavern would be heaven. If you're me.
DeleteKatherine: my dad has a saying, that "...talking to some people is like putting a note down a prairie dog hole."
DeleteMade me laugh! Will have to remember that one.
Unfortunately, I don't think my sister and I will ever be reconciled beyond basic politeness at mandatory family events.
We were never close anyway because of the age difference she is the eldest and I am the youngest of five. We socialized mostly at all-family events. Also, she has never had my (or anyone else's) back - a fair weather friend who would lay low during the few times I turned to family for moral support. My family is not the helping out type in general, and she is the least likely of all to extend a helping hand to a relative dealing with any kind of problem. She doesn't want to be involved and has said as much at times. She is vivacious and charming and has many friends. I don't know if she is more willing to help friends in need than those in her own family, or not, but she has always avoided reaching out to siblings if they hit a serious bump. The only family member who has always come through is a brother-in-law - married to a different sister. He is a conservative, but apparently did a write-in in 2016. Couldn't bring himself to vote for Hillary either. He approves of some of Trump's policies, but not of Trump himself or of other policies. His wife, another sister, is the only family member in our generation besides my husband and I to openly break with the Republican Party and strongly oppose Trump. A couple of my closest friends are also Trump supporters, and I no longer have a close relationship with them.
I see Trump as racist, among other things. And I was shocked to hear a couple of racist comments from a couple of friends (and family) who may have momentarily forgotten that my own children are in interracial marriages, and are married to immigrants, one of whom came here as a toddler, as a refugee - born in a refugee camp. They support someone who ran on a platform of bigotry, inciting fear and hate. The comments they made as slips of the tongue revealed feelings that I had never suspected were there. I didn't call them on it, but simply have not interacted with them much. One of my once-closest friends insists that Trump condemned the white supremacists and neo-nazis in Charlottesville. She refused to listen when I pointed out that after reading the teleprompter speech after his first comments caused a backlash, that he reverted to his initial sentiments a day or so later, saying he had made a mistake in going against his gut and reading the teleprompter speech. They ignored that.
Better to know the truth of their feelings, even though we do now feel isolated and a bit lonely. Both my husband and I grew up in Republican, conservative families and most of our friends over the years fell into that camp also. So, as mavericks, my husband and I have lost close lifelong friendships, and avoid certain family members for the most part. For them, once a Republican, always a Republican. They find ways to rationalize what he says and does, and buy into every right-wing falsehood out there. We plan to move away at some point - there is really nothing keeping us here anymore.
Sorry about the soap box sob story. But, in our case, Trump has indeed managed to cause a permanent disruption in several once-close relationships with family and friends. We no longer respect them, and I'm sure they feel the same way about us.
So many posters here are history lovers that I’d like to mention one of the best history books I’ve ever read. It’s Joseph Ellis’s recent book “The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789.” It’s the inside story of how four Founding Fathers conspired (and that’s the word) to force the Colonies to agree on a Constitution. It’s the history that never gets mentioned in college courses. It was riveting and an eye-opener, the highlight of my reading last year.
ReplyDeleteThe plotting is covered in a few lines in "Hamilton" the expense account musical.
DeleteHamilton: The Book was cheaper.
DeleteWas quite surprised to find how much Hamilton and Jefferson didn't like each other..."detest" may not be too strong a word! I have a good friend who pipes up "It's Jefferson's doing," every time something goes wrong in the US of A, which is now hourly. Get her going on states that have two senators and hardly qualify for a member of the House because of their small pop. Have to bring up the Zimmerman telegram to distract her.
I haven’t seen the musical, but I did read Chernow’s wonderful book--a great example of how good historical writing can be. However, in the Ellis book it is made quite clear that we got the Constitution because Hamilton was in a snit. He had attended the convention that was called to revise the Articles of Confederation, but several states didn’t send delegates (they didn’t want any changes) and the convention had to disband. Hamilton was furious, and entirely on his own bent, without consulting anyone, he simply announced that there would be a Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia the next summer. It could have just been a shot fired in the dark (he had no power to compel anyone to attend) but Washington, Madison, and Jay seized on the idea and began to work their wiles. Their tactics make modern politics seem almost benign. Or did until the Republican Party decided to destroy the federal government and the monster in the WH appeared out of fire and brimstone.
DeleteI am about to commit an aphorism. We wouldn't have had a United States of America if it hadn't been for Jefferson, but we wouldn't still have a United States of America if it weren't for Hamilton.
DeleteJefferson was in Paris at the time of the Convention, totally unconvinced that it was necessary. Madison was in Philadelphia making it happen. Their correspondence is interesting as much for the squirrels they (mostly Jefferson) went chasing after as well as for the matters of high pith and moment they debated. But what really stops a reader now is when TJ issues one of his equivalents to a Winston Churchill "action, this day!" memo, and, the Atlantic being what it is, doesn't get a reply from JM for three months.
I wonder if the Constitutional Convention could have happened if the delegates had Twitter accounts. Really. I doubt it.
No--the Constitution could not have been produced if the colonists had had Twitter accounts! The attendees were sworn to silence on the course of debate and the content. They were not even supposed to keep notes. We know what we know only because Madison himself ignored the rule and did keep an extensive record of the arguments.
DeleteIn other historical news, some archaeologists studying oral hygiene ca. 1000 AD, discovered lapis lazuli in the tarter on the teeth of a female skeleton at a monastic site, indicating that the woman was involved in medieval book production.
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty well established that women were scribes, artists, and even authors during this time, but the teeth evidence is interesting.
Not sure about the theory that the lapis got in her tarter because she used her mouth to bring her brush to a point. Illuminated MSS were done with quills at that time.
Also, the presence of the lapis doesn't prove she was a scribe. She might have been involved in grinding the stone to make the blue ink.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/01/09/683283982/a-blue-clue-in-medieval-teeth-may-bespeak-a-womans-artistry-circa-1-000-a-d
And, speaking of women scribes, a Michigan woman has developed a new typeface, Fayette, after visiting the ghost town of Fayette in the Upper Peninsula, one of my very favorite places in the world.
Mia Cinelli was looking through the records kept by the town's accountant, and was so taken with his handwriting that she invented the new typeface based on his penmanship.
Her Web site is pretty interesting also.
https://www.miacinelli.com/Fayette
Jean, thanks. Interesting - I love that archeologists continue to make new discoveries that shed more light on the cultures of the past.
ReplyDelete