Cognitive Dissonance

The lines between autobiography and fiction are often permeable. Often a fiction writer's early work is grounded in the writer's own lived experiences. Nick Adams is not Ernest Hemingway, but they shared many of the same experiences. When Nick Adams returns to the Upper Peninsula in Michigan for some fly fishing after the horrors of World War I, the fictional character is following the footsteps of the author. Writers of autobiography, on the other hand, must deal with partial memories. We remember what we want about our past, and we remember some of the things that we would prefer to forget. Whether our pain or our success, we tend to forget certain details and may invent others.

After a Catholic childhood, I became a born again Christian in spring 1980. Over the next several years, my testimony--an account of my conversion--was something I was encouraged to develop as a compelling story and often asked to share in groups. The first real test of my new faith after I made a commitment to follow Jesus is easily recalled. It was only a few days or weeks after my conversion that Mount St. Helens erupted. The resulting ash fall led to many days of cancelled classes. I was in college at Washington State University. I had become something of an expert at drinking game of caps--throwing a beer cap into a glass several feet away--and so there was a lot of peer pressure to perform during the massive amount of drinking that took place in the dorm that week. But, I needed to bring my grades up and was spending my time in study. I resisted the temptations (see "May 18, 1980").

This morning I read an article that I tracked down after it was referenced in a few places. Then I walked my dog. As we walked, my reflections on that article provoked a memory of fall 1980. In Political Science 300 (Constitutional Law) one morning, the woman who sat in front of me turned around to look at someone behind me who was asking the professor a question, saw the political button that I was wearing, and looked at my face with an expression of stern disapproval. It would have hurt less had I not already developed a great deal of respect for her. I assumed from her expression that she despised Ronald Reagan.

I wore this button

How much of this memory is imagined and how much recalled? I do not know where the lines cross from memory to imagination. I know with certainty that I was wearing a campaign button promoting Reagan for President and I remember a look on the woman's face that I read as disapproval. Why she had cause to turn around, however, is less clear in my memory. Maybe I had asked the professor a question. Maybe someone behind or beside me was arguing with the professor. Maybe someone dropped a bottle of water on the floor and it made some noise.

The past few weeks, I have spent a lot of time reflecting on my life in the 1980s. My early support of Reagan before and after my conversion from Catholic to evangelical Protestant led to a great deal of  disillusionment by the end of his administration. In fall 1980, I attended meetings, put up campaign posters, wore political buttons (I had one on my backpack in addition to the one on my shirt). I labored to convince friends that Reagan was a godly man, a Christian who would lead this nation in a direction that was good.

I do not recall what I thought about Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority in 1980, but I'm fairly certain that I did not read the magazine article from 1 February 1981 that I looked at this morning. My home town newspaper carried Parade Magazine and I always read it in high school. But, I did not maintain a subscription in college. Instead, I spent several mornings per week in the periodicals room of Holland Library getting my news by reading Time, Newsweek, and other magazines and newspapers. During this time I started seeking a contrasting balance by reading the National Review on the right and the Nation on the left. Sometimes I tried to read Der Spiegel to get an international perspective and to practice my German.

This morning, I was attempting to check the accuracy of a quote that has appeared several times in my reading the past few days. The source is Marguerite Michaels, "Billy Graham: America Is Not God's Only Kingdom," Parade Magazine (1 February 1981), 6. Only the first page of the article is accessible without getting behind a paywall, but that is enough not only to verify the quote, but also to reveal a tension that caused me considerable cognitive dissonance several years later.

Michaels describes the political priorities of Falwell's Moral Majority as, "pro-family, pro-life, and against the ERA [Equal Rights Amendment], gay rights, pornography, SALT II [Strategic Arms Limitation Talks] and defense cuts." She then quotes Graham, "It would be unfortunate if people got the impression all evangelists belong to that group. The majority do not. I don't wish to be identified with them."

The next paragraph struck a cord with me, quoting Graham, Michaels offers:

I'm for morality. But morality goes beyond sex to human freedom and social justice. We as clergy know so very little to speak out with such authority on the Panama Canal or superiority of armaments. Evangelists can't be closely identified with any particular party of person. We have to stand in the middle in order to preach to all people, right and left. I haven't been faithful to my own advice in the past. I will be in the future.

In the 1960s and 1970s, social justice was central to Catholic teaching. One consistency for me between my Catholic upbringing and my life as an evangelical was a commitment to social justice. In the summer of 1981, I took a bus trip with a group of fellow college evangelicals from San Diego, California to Ensenada, Mexico. Seeing the poverty in Tijuana as we passed through that city provoked tears. Others, seeing the tears, consoled me, empathized with my pain, and engaged me in conversation about causes and consequences of inequality.

Nothing in that trip in 1981 dampened my enthusiasm for President Reagan. But, as the 1980s wore on, I finished college with a degree in history, got married, worked a variety of jobs as I sought full-time teaching work, and eventually returned to school for an MA to make myself more competitive in a difficult job market that favored football coaches as history teachers (I had run cross country in high school).

The more I learned of history and the more I listened to President Reagan and watched the policies he promoted, the less I believed that he and I shared the same Christian conviction that social justice was something one should work towards. In 1984, I voted for Reagan again, but with less enthusiasm than I had in 1980. It was the last time that I voted for a Republican candidate for President. In 1988, I favored Jesse Jackson.

The quote I sought to source: "The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it" (credited to Billy Graham). It appears in the first paragraph of the second column of the article. Here's the whole paragraph:

Billy Graham has talked with Jerry Falwell. "I told him to preach the Gospel. That's our calling. I want to preserve the purity of the Gospel and the freedom of religion in America. I don't want to see religious bigotry in any form. Liberals organized in the '60s, and conservatives certainly have a right to organize in the '80s, but it would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it."
Michaels, "Billy Graham: America Is Not God's Only Kingdom"

Reading Graham's words today, my curiosity is aroused. Surely he understood in 1981 how folks associated with the Moral Majority were using the phrase "religious freedom" to advocate for tax-exempt status for racially segregated Christian schools and colleges. But, the context suggests that Graham had a different notion of religious freedom.

In my view, the 1980s turned the Republican party sharply against policies that favored social justice. That Christians facilitated that shift, or tolerated it, became a growing problem for me. Billy Graham's words strike me today as prophetic.

Hamilton on the Nature of Genius

A Lesson in Sourcing

Many publications credit Alexander Hamilton with a statement that any genius he possesses is rooted in diligent study and a bit of obsession. Genius is "the fruit of labor and thought". This quote caught my interest last night while I was was reading a biography of a well-known twentieth century industrialist.* I went in search of a source, encountering mostly many quote aggregators that proliferate online with no sourcing information, each one simply presenting the same quotes as all the others with different lace surrounding the words.

One such farm, however, claimed to source all the quotes it had aggregated. LibQuotes claims, "278 sourced quotes" (libquotes.com/alexander-hamilton). Most of the sources among those that I checked are eighteenth century letters, essays, or reports authored by Hamilton, or early nineteenth century compilations of the same. But the quote on the nature of genius is sourced to an early twentieth century business education group that called itself the Alexander Hamilton Institute. The institute served to educate, principally through printed texts, business leaders. Their 1919 Modern Business Report List is the source referenced by LibQuotes. It neither is a credible source for the expressions of an eighteenth century political leader, nor the earliest readily available publication with Hamilton's alleged words. The quote appears on the back cover of the pamphlet.

I made a screenshot of the back cover and posted it on Facebook, noting the lack of credible evidence that Hamilton said or wrote it. I awoke to several comments, including several comments from fellow historian and blogger, Larry Cebula. Cebula notes that the quote, "appears nowhere attributed to Hamilton until the early 20th century." 

Following Cebula's comments, I spent some time searching Google Books. The earliest reference turned up so far is The Detroiter (24 January 1916), 5. It appears in a box. Surely the quote was in circulation earlier, but where did it appear?

The Detroiter January 1916

It appeared in many business publications as early as 1916 and into the 1920s, and continued to appear in similar publications up to our day. Tracing it to Hamilton is another matter. More than likely, the quote is fake. But it was fabricated more than a century ago. By whom? For what purpose? The search goes on.



*R. L. Wilson, Ruger & His Guns: A History of the Man, the Company and Their Firearms (1996). The Hamilton quote appears on page 97.

What is Ignorance?

As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.
Josh Billings

I am reflecting on a statement I recall from the Reagan years while watching friends and acquaintances broadcast what they "know" about why Donald Trump should or should not concede that Joe Biden will be the next President. 

Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn't so.
Ronald Reagan, "A Time for Choosing" 

Reagan's words were deployed against him in the presidential debate with Walter Mondale in October 1984.

Well, I guess I'm reminded a little bit of what Will Rogers once said about Hoover. He said, "It's not what he doesn't know that bothers me, it's what he knows for sure that just ain't so."
Walter Mondale, Presidential Debate

The New York Times attempted to source the quote, determining that it did not emanate from Will Rogers.

More often, the quote gets attributed to Mark Twain, such as in the epigraph to The Big Short (2015), a film about the 2008 financial crisis. The Center for Mark Twain Studies has a short article about it, "The Apocryphal Twain: 'Things we Know that Just Ain't So'". They note Al Gore's frequent attribution of the idea to Twain.

It is a remarkable concept that resonates in our age of misinformation. Garson O'Toole, Quote Investigator has chased down the origins at least twice: "It Is Better to Know Nothing than to Know What Ain’t So" (May 2015) and "It Ain’t What You Don’t Know That Gets You Into Trouble. It’s What You Know for Sure That Just Ain’t So" (November 2018). In both cases, Josh Billings seems to be the leading candidate for introducing the phrase to American discourse.

In the 2015 article. O'Toole locates the precursor in vol. 11 of An Universal History: From the Earliest Account of Time (1747) by John Swinton and others. He highlights the expression, "it is better to know nothing, than to apprehend we know what we know not." A digital version of the pages of the book is available from the University of Michigan, accessible via HathiTrust.

I offer a screenshot of the relevant paragraph on the right.

How do my friends "know" that Trump should not concede? They do not trust the mass media, which is too liberal. One conservative friend even told me that FOX News is not conservative enough. Where do they get their news, then? 

Certainly there are legal challenges in the courts, some of which were dismissed last week. But, even if they all succeed, will it be enough to turn the election Trump's way? The Wall Street Journal does not appear to think so. See "Election 2020: What are the Trump Legal Claims?" (8 November 2020).

Elections are not final until certified, and the next President is selected when the Electoral College meets in mid-December. In the meantime, every major news outlet has declared former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris the projected President and Vice President. Even after Biden and Harris are inaugurated in January, the divisions in this nation remain deep. Those divisions are fueled by significant disagreement concerning the nature of credible information. How much do we know that is not so?

Most of us can see ignorance in those with whom we disagree, but rarely note it in ourselves. It has been the mission of Patriots and Peoples (clicking on the banner takes you to the home screen--the latest article) from the beginning to look to original sources, to determine their credibility using the methods developed since the nineteenth century for the practice of history. Fact checkers utilize similar methods when evaluating claims by politicians. Mondale and Gore got it wrong when they sourced their quote. 

Irony

American history runs over with irony and contradictions. The gap between common beliefs and the evidence is especially true of the American West. The West revels in individualism, but the region as a whole is vastly more dependent upon the Federal government than the East.

Pamela Haag, The Gunning of America: Business and the making of American Gun Culture (2016) traces Samuel Colt and Oliver Winchester's efforts to make a business of the manufacture of firearms. She offers a compelling sentence that crystallizes a central irony in Western America.

No objects are more indelibly associated with the American West that the Colt revolver and the Winchester rifle, and yet no objects relied more heavily for their survival--before, but especially after, the Civil War--on non-U.S., global markets.
Haag, 35.

Samuel Colt's Cabinet of Memorials, for example, containing gifts from customers, contained a gold snuff box from the sultan of the Ottoman Empire; a ring from Alexander Alexandrovioch, the Russian grand duke; a ring from the king of Sardinia; a tea -caddy and cigar case from Siam; and other gifts from England, Italy, and the Islamic world.

Minutiae

Robert F. Williams, Labor Organizer?

Small things catch me. While reading a history book, I have a tendency to get pulled away on a tangent when the writer makes some small, perhaps even trivial, comment that strikes me as wrong. These journeys into minutiae can be rewarding, but sometimes they prove to be a waste of time. Sometimes these journeys make reading impossible. Hundreds of books sit on my shelves unfinished because some small thing sent me after the truth of some small matter. Sometimes this quest has led to purchase of more books that I start and never finish.

My reading process is like the glass bead game in Hermann Hesse, Das Glasperlenspiel (1943).

After watching a documentary* a few weeks ago, I set out to learn more about Robert F. Williams. The video mentioned Williams setting up a National Rifle Association (NRA) affiliate gun club for African Americans in Monroe, North Carolina in the late 1950s. Williams had been only vaguely familiar to me from a short essay of his in The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader (1991), which I had used a textbook in some classes I taught at Washington State University in the 1990s. The NRA affiliate caught me by surprise. Here was a piece of the Civil Rights Movement that has not been emphasized in most histories of the era. Maybe it had not been emphasized in any of them.

I ordered a copy of Timothy B. Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Radio Free Dixie and the Roots of Black Power (1999), the book that offered the best prospects of  illuminating this unknown (at least to me) story.

While waiting for the arrival of Radio Free Dixie, I spent some time searching the Spokane Public Library for books that might have a little bit about Williams. I found one. Bryan Burrough, Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence (2015) is concerned with several groups of violent extremists of which the Weather Underground is perhaps the best known. The second chapter, however, is titled "Negroes with Guns". That chapter title came up in my library search and caught my eye because it is the title of a book Williams published in 1962 after he fled to Cuba to avoid trumped up kidnapping charges after he protected a white couple from violence at the hands of an angry black mob. The mob was still seething after Ku Klux Klan members from three states had descended on Monroe to disrupt an African American and white ally celebration after some direct action seeking to integrate area churches. The KKK transformed the celebration into a violent riot.

In Days of Rage, Burrough asserts his thesis and the place of Robert F. Williams in his story.

If the story of the civil rights and antiwar movements is an inspiring tale of American empowerment and moral conviction, the underground years represent a final dark chapter that can seem easy to ignore. To begin to understand it, one needs to understand the voices of black anger, which began to be noticed during the 1950s.
Burrough, 28.

Williams, he asserts, stimulated not only the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and other Black Power groups, but these groups led to the mostly white groups, such as the Symbionese Liberation Army. Blacks led and whites followed, Burrough argues. His thesis is provocative and caught my interest, but then he seemed to erase more than two centuries of slavery when he asserted 1954 as a start date after African Americans in the South "had been subjected to almost a century of oppression, police brutality, discrimination, disenfranchisement, and lynching" (28). That timeline begins after the Civil War. Prior to emancipation, slaves did not vote and they suffered brutally. They were certainly oppressed. They may not have been lynched by the KKK, which came into existence after the Civil War, but they were routinely killed.

The next two paragraphs put me into a critical mindset as I grew more and more disappointed with Days of Rage. Then, finally, the existence of slavery was acknowledged with brief mention of the slave rebellions led by Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey. Even then, however, the author's suggestion that these rebellions in 1822 and 1832 were the beginning overlooks the significance of Toussaint L'Ouverture and the revolution in Saint-Domingue (1791). The American South was never isolated from the Caribbean. Events there affected events in the United States.

Nonetheless, I read on.

On the next page, I read that Burrough perceived a passing of the torch of self-defense (his metaphor) between five black men from 1959 to 1972. These five were Robert F. Williams, Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, and the pair, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale.

The second sentence of this section stopped me again: "Williams spent his early years working in Detroit factories, where he became a labor organizer" (30). By the time I had picked up this book, I had read a dozen or more articles online about Williams. None mentioned that he had been a labor organizer, although work in Detroit's factories had come up.

This assertion gave me a reading question that had to await the arrival of Radio Free Dixie. The book arrived a week after I ordered it from some used bookstore in the Midwest. I read it through the course of several evenings.

Tyson's Radio Free Dixie offers no evidence that corroborates Burrough's claim. In Tyson's account, Williams joined Local 600 of the United Automobile Workers of America and read the Daily Worker, a publication of the Communist Party (39-40). In 1943, Williams was the youngest worker on the assembly line at River Rouge in Detroit. He did not remain at the job long, moving to California in search of better employment, joining the Army near the end of the war, and then returning to North Carolina. In 1948, he was back in Detroit working at the Cadillac plant. He rejoined Local 600 and read the Daily Worker in the washrooms. He submitted a "thinly fictionalized" story "of a black veteran's return to the small-town South" to the Detroit Daily Worker (62).

Where did Burrough get his information concerning Williams' alleged labor organizing? He does not offer the sort of citations that are expected of scholarly works. Burrough is a journalist and he aims his book at non-academic readers. Nonetheless, in the note on sources, he mentions Peniel E. Joseph, Waiting 'til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America (2007). Joseph offers a single sentence concerning Williams' time in Detroit.

A tall, broad-shouldered veteran, Williams was a well-traveled former industrial laborer who dabbled in poetry, consorted with radicals, and remained defiant in the face of racial terror in Monroe, North Carolina.
Joseph, 20.

Williams "consorted with radicals". I can imagine how sloppy note taking could mutate consorting into organizing, but Joseph does not call Williams a "labor organizer". Tyson offers more. Williams published a poem in the Socialist Workers Party newspaper, the Militant, in 1953. He also found another industrial job at Curtiss Wrights Aeronautics in New Jersey, commuting from Harlem, where he lived with his Aunt Estelle Williams. In Harlem, he spent a lot of time with "a group of white radicals whom he met through friends" (70).

Burrough went to great lengths to interview former members of the radical underground groups of the 1970s and the FBI agents who tracked them. Days of Rage may be a good book on the subject. However, the author appears to rely on sloppy reading of secondary sources for what he says about Williams. This may not invalidate his thesis concerning Williams' influence, or the influence of the Black Power movement on white radicals, but it does render Days of Rage a poor choice for learning about the Black Power movements themselves. It is too thin and not well-researched.


*In Search of the Second Amendment (2006) is available in full on YouTube. It is written, directed, produced, and narrated by David T. Hardy, whose law journal articles concerned with the Second Amendment are well-worth reading. The documentary strikes me as reasonably strong on the English precedents to the Second Amendment, on the revolutionary era, and on the mostly not often told story of the role of guns and gun rights in the antebellum Dred Scott decision and the mid-twentieth century Civil Rights era. When it gets to the past few decades, however, it becomes much more a strongly ideological brief for the NRA that is willing to delve into some weak sociology applied to cherry-picked crime data. Even so, this is my provisional opinion. My assessment is more a set of questions than a verdict.

History as Science

Reading the important introduction to Hayden White's Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (1973), I am struck by White's lucidity. I do not recall a clearer explanation of why history is not a science.

[H]istory differs from the sciences precisely because historians disagree, not only over what are the laws of social causation that they might invoke to explain a given sequence of events, but also over the question of the form that a "scientific" explanation ought to take. There is a long history of dispute over whether natural scientific and historical explanations must have the same formal characteristics. This dispute turns on the problem of whether the kinds of laws that might be invoked in scientific explanations have their counterparts in the realm of the so-called human or spiritual sciences, such as sociology and history. The physical sciences appear to progress by virtue of the agreements, reached from time to time among members of the established communities of scientists, regarding what will count as a scientific problem, the form that a scientific explanation must take, and the kinds of data that will be permitted to count as evidence in a properly scientific account of reality. Among historians no such agreement exists, or ever has existed. ... [H]istorical explanations are bound to be based on different metahistorical presuppositions about the nature of the historical field, presuppositions that generate different conceptions of the kind of explanations that can be used in historiographical analysis.
White, Metahistory, 12-13. 

The assertion, "[t]here is a long history of dispute...", catches my eye, however. White offers here a proof that settles the question of the unsettled matter of historical method and narrative. How is it possible to make such an assertion without taking sides in the dispute under investigation?

Monday Morning

It is the privilege of historians to be wise after the event, and the more foolish the historian the wiser he usually aims to be.
C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins (1963 [1938]), 172.

The Dog and the Shark

A constant pleasure of history are the little stories that pop out while reading primary sources. Often distracting from the purpose that led to the text in the first place, these episodes entertain and add texture. They also offer unexpected connections to other stories.

As I prepare to teach Atlantic history in the fall, I am perusing texts concerned with the development of the sugar industry in the West Indies. Matthew Parker, The Sugar Barons: Family, Corruption, Empire, and War in the West Indies (2011) has filled time-spaces between the social activities of New Year's celebrations the past few days. Parker draws heavily upon Richard Ligon, A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes (1657). Inasmuch as the 1673 edition of Ligon's text is readily available via Internet Archive, I have delved into that text. Ligon offers three compelling paragraphs concerning "a Fish called a Shark" (5).

Several sharks were taken on board the Achilles, the ship on which Ligon made passage from England to the West Indies in 1647. Once the shark had been landed on board, however, the adventure began. Most of the passengers were afraid to approach it. Only the fearless sailors and a very large dog had the courage.

We had aboard divers mastive [mastiff] Dogs, and amongst them, one so large and fierce, as I have seldom seen any like him; this Dog flew to [the shark] with the greatest Courage that might be, but could take no hold of him, by reason of his large roundness and sliminess; but if by chance he got hold of one of his Fins, the Shark would throw him from side to side of the Ship, as if he had been nothing; and doubtless if he had encountered him in his own Element, the Sea, he would have made quick work with him.
Ligon, True and Exact History, 5.

Reading of the flopping shark's ability to fling this large mastiff across the ship's deck, I am reminded of the fate of the Aztecs who faced such animals in battle.

It is often assumed by those with superficial understanding of history that Europeans prevailed in the New World because they had superior armaments (see "Superior European Technology"). On the contrary, the most important weapon the Europeans possessed was infectious disease. The Aztecs were weakened by disease prior to their conquest in 1521. Their repression of neighboring peoples also helped the Spanish, who were able to recruit allies among enemies of the Aztecs. In battle, guns were insignificant except where cannon were useful. But the Spanish had two terribly powerful weapons of use in close combat--their swords--Toledo steel--and their dogs--mastiffs bred for war.

Significance

Max Euwe (1901-1981) was a mathematician and the fifth official World Chess Champion. The beginning of his now classic text, The Development of Chess Style (1968)* has a assertion concerning the nature of history and the centrality of questions of significance that is as terse as any I have seen in the writings of professional historians.

To suppose that the history of any subject should be just a collection of independent facts is a serious misapprehension. They may, it is true, make interesting reading; but they may also have little significance for the subject in question. "Introduction," n.p.

*Originally published in Dutch as Veldheersschap op de Vierenzestig (1966)

Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood's presentation at the Republican National Convention has provoked praise and criticism. Few are neutral. Eastwood is a fiscal conservative whose social views diverge from those of cultural conservatives.

Many critics found his remarks disorganized, but others praised the drama. While addressing the crowd, he also carried on a conversation with an empty chair representing President Obama. The crowd and viewers were left to fill in what he heard from the chair. Enthusiastic cheers and laughter made clear that the crowd could hear President Obama's profanities.

Eastwood explained that not all Hollywood people are liberals, despite what a lot of people seem to believe. "It's just that conservative people by the nature of the word itself play it a little closer to the vest; they just don't go around hot doggin' it."

Eastwood then introduced the empty chair and stated that he had some questions for the President. He mentioned everyone crying when Obama was talking about hope and change four years ago. "This is great. Everyone was crying. Oprah was crying. I was even crying. I haven't cried that hard since I found that there's twenty-three million unemployed in this country."

A historian might interrupt here with the observation that tears for the unemployed were shed while President Bush was in office. At least that's the sequence established by Eastwood's sentence.

"That is a disgrace, a national disgrace. ... This administration hasn't done enough to cure that."

Eastwood then turned to the chair to ask President Obama about promises he made. "What do you say to people?"

Eastwood's performance indicates that President Obama had little to say here. The actor then turned to Obama's promise to close Gitmo. Obama's response, as the actor presented it, was clear and to the point.

Eastwood faulted President Obama for supporting the war in Afghanistan because, "we didn't check with the Russians to see how they did for the ten years."

Was former President Bush sitting in the invisible chair next to President Obama?

Eastwood's only reference to specific proposals by Mitt Romney came next.  He contrasted the President's target date for bringing troops home from Afghanistan with Romney's, "why don't you just bring them home tomorrow morning?"

In his dialogue with the empty chair, Eastwood began suggesting what President Obama might be saying. "What do you want me to tell Romney? I can't tell him to do that. He can't do that to himself." Any ambiguity concerning the words the actor was hearing was soon resolved, even for the least imaginative viewers. The crowd loved the performance. Many liberals suggested that Eastwood seemed confused.

Later in the performance, Eastwood suggested that electing attorneys seemed like a bad idea (Romney, as well as Obama, has a law degree). Among the problems with attorneys: "they are taught to weigh both sides." Eastwood suggested, "it's time for a business man ... a quote unquote 'a stellar business man'."

He suggested that President Obama should step aside, mentioning that he could still use a plane, a smaller one, though. He contrasted the fuel economy of the Presidential plane with Obama's ecological views.

Responses to the performance appear to closely follow partisan alignments. It was a novel performance designed to fire up the GOP crowd prior to Romney's formal acceptance of the Republican nomination for President. It accomplished that much.

Many news sources are presenting portions of the performance with commentary. The performance deserves to be viewed as a whole.

Link: https://youtu.be/3DGl-4gByV4

The performance began with an image of Eastwood as Dirty Harry behind the podium, and concluded with Dirty Harry's signature line: "Make my day!" Michael Paul Rogin's classic piece is worth remembering: "'Make My Day!': Spectacle as Amnesia in Imperial Politics," Representations 29 (Winter 1990): 99-123.

Rogin recalls the scene of Eastwood's use of the line on the silver screen.

Eastwood is daring a black man to murder a woman, in other words, so that Dirty Harry can kill the black. No question this time about whether the gun is empty and Eastwood at risk. The lives he proves his toughness by endangering are female and black, not his own. (103)

Rogin opines that President Reagan, when he uttered these same words to Congress, endangered the same lives.

Hemingway and the Black Renaissance

Ohio State University Press is bringing out an important new book this spring. From the publisher's website:  

Hemingway and the Black Renaissance, edited by Gary Edward Holcomb and Charles Scruggs, explores a conspicuously overlooked topic: Hemingway’s wide-ranging influence on writers from the Harlem Renaissance to the present day. An observable who’s who of black writers—Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Wallace Thurman, Chester Himes, Alex la Guma, Derek Walcott, Gayl Jones, and more—cite Hemingway as a vital influence. This inspiration extends from style, Hemingway’s minimalist art, to themes of isolation and loneliness, the dilemma of the expatriate, and the terrifying experience of living in a time of war. The relationship, nevertheless, was not unilateral, as in the case of Jean Toomer’s 1923 hybrid, short-story cycle Cane, which influenced Hemingway’s collage-like 1925 In Our Time.

Gary Holcomb told me about this book while we were fly fishing in Idaho. I am excited to see it in press.

July 1971

On the last day of July 1971, the Grateful Dead played at the Yale Bowl. When this football stadium was built in 1914, it was "the largest amphitheater built since the Roman Colosseum," according to Landmarks in Yale's History. The Dead's performance there was the first of "Sugaree" and "Mr. Charlie," and the final performance of "Darkness Jam." During "Sugar Magnolia," the audience clapped in rhythm with the band, and continued doing so through the next song, "Casey Jones." Some discussion on the Grateful Dead website alleges that rioting outside the stadium that night ended the venue for concerts, but concerts were held there until 1980 when continuing complaints from neighbors brought them to an end. Little River Band was the last group to perform in the Yale Bowl.

Johnny Appleseed

Long, long after,
When settlers put up beam and rafter,
They asked of the birds: "Who gave this fruit?
Who watched this fence till the seeds took root?
Who gave these boughs?" They asked the sky,
And there was no reply.
But the robin might have said,
"To the farthest West he has followed the sun,
His life and his empire just begun."
Vachel Lindsey, "In Praise of Johnny Appleseed" (1923)

In my pre-teen and early teen years, I read every book presenting American folktales and legends that was available in our little Air Force base library. Some of my favorites included stories of deforestation (Paul Bunyan), the futile battle against mechanization (John Henry), and the introduction of alien plant species (Johnny Appleseed). The books that pulled me into these stories were fanciful and aimed at young readers. The stories were uprooted from their origins as descriptions of actual lives, exaggerated the known facts, and worked into the realm of myth.

The real Johnny Appleseed died in Indiana in 1845, according to an obituary printed in the Fort Wayne Sentinel (22 March 1845). He was tall, a preacher taken with Emanuel Swedenborg's writings, and planted nurseries rather than spreading seeds willy-nilly. A recent book delves into the myth and known history, making a strong effort to separate the two. Howard Means, Johnny Appleseed: The Man, the Myth, the American Story (2011) offers a detailed biography of the life, activities, and beliefs of John Chapman, the real Johnny Appleseed.

As I remember the stories, I was free to imagine that his seed sowing enterprise took him further west, and that he might have ended his days near present-day Wenatchee. My memory is almost certainly faulty and found its freedom in confusion between the Northwest of early American history--the Ohio Country--and the far Northwest, or Pacific Northwest--a term created by railroad publicists in the late nineteenth century. Even the Disney short, Johnny Appleseed (1948), which I almost certainly watched sometime in the 1960s or early 1970s, places Johnny Appleseed in the Ohio country.

The heart of the Disney film pits cultivation of orchards and promotion of religion against a vast wilderness of dangerous animals. Indians appear on the margins, part of the crowd singing and dancing during the harvest festival. The wary animals first believed the human who moved into a clearing and began to plant seeds was a curious intruder who needed to leave. But, none could tell him so. Finally a skunk went out to investigate and was on the verge of attacking, when Johnny began to stroke its fur. The hero of the story wins over the animals. The narrator emphasizes that he is the first human they had seen without knife or gun. Johnny Appleseed thus fits into the mythic structure of humanity's shift from hunting to cultivation, a reflection of the Neolithic revolution and the rise of civilization. The human story of the beginnings of civilization as long ago as ten millennia ago gets repeated in the New Eden, the American wilderness. See "Neolithic Revolution and American Indians" for another episode in this mythic story.


Apples and Cherries in the Pacific Northwest

Today, Washington state leads the United States in apple production. New York City might be the "big apple," but the apple is more a symbol of the far Northwest than of anywhere else. The apple has become as much a symbol of Pacific Northwest regional culture as the salmon and the seemingly endless evergreen forests. But, while salmon have all but disappeared from every region outside Alaska (and even there the proposed Pebble Mine threatens the last watersheds in full health), and while timber jobs in Washington have become scarce, the apple thrives.

John Chapman never made it this far west. The origins of apples in the Pacific Northwest begin in the Willamette Valley and just over the Columbia River at Fort Vancouver. In the 1820s, the Hudson's Bay Company cultivated many food growing plants from seeds. From these plants, Joseph Garvais cultivated the first substantial apple orchards. Contemporaneous with John Chapman in the Ohio Country, Garvais and other retired Hudson Bay Company employees developed agriculture in Oregon Country.

But it was the introduction of grafted fruit trees that caused the region's agriculture to blossom. These first arrived via wagon along the Oregon Trail courtesy of an Iowa farmer who headed west. In 1847, Henderson Lewelling crossed the country with his family and three wagons. Two of the wagons transported some seven hundred small trees. Once in Oregon, Lewelling went into the nursery business with William Meek. When the gold rush lured Lewelling and Meek to California, where they saw opportunity for more profits developing agriculture, they sold their nursery in Milwaukie, Oregon to Henderson's younger brother, Seth. According to Ronald Irvine, The Wine Project (1997), Meek won an award for wine at the California State Fair in 1859.

Seth Lewelling thrived in the nursery business. His foreman for the orchards, Ah Bing, has been immortalized in the name of a popular fruit that he helped originate. Today, Washington state not only leads the nation in sweet cherry production, but accounts for more than half of the nation's total production.

In the world of legend and myth, everyone knows of Johnny Appleseed. The story of agriculture in the far Northwest, however, offers many less well-known, but every bit as compelling stories of such men as Joseph Garvais, Henderson Lewelling, and Ah Bing.

Thomas Jefferson: Oenophile

During his first term as President, Jefferson spent seventy-five hundred dollars—roughly a hundred and twenty thousand dollars in today’s currency—on wine, and he is generally regarded as America’s first great wine connoisseur.
Patrick Radden Keefe, "The Jefferson Bottles"

Thomas Jefferson has long been one of the most interesting American leaders. He wrote the Declaration of Independence with a small amount of editing help from his colleagues. He designed his own home, a marvel of architecture. He argued persuasively with Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, perhaps the leading theorist concerning evolution a century prior to Charles Darwin, but who made some astounding statements concerning the deficiency of North American air and its lack of large fauna. Jefferson gathered specimens of fauna that dwarfed those in Europe to prove Buffon wrong. Jefferson played the violin, studied languages, experimented with agriculture, and maintained a life-long correspondence with his rival in the most fiercely contested election in the early national period of United States politics, John Adams.

Thomas Jefferson also loved wine.

In keeping with the focus of Patriots and Peoples, I scanned the indices of A Patriot's History of the United States and of A People's History of the United States for references to Jefferson's oenophilia. The term wine is not indexed in either book, but both contain ample references to Jefferson. Howard Zinn focuses on Jefferson's contribution to politics, saying nothing about his architecture, science, or social views with two exceptions: he credits the spirit of the times rather than personal views of the man for the fact that Jefferson remained a slave owner to his death (see "Thomas Jefferson: Abolitionist?"). The second reference to his cultural values comes in a section concerned with the "cult of domesticity," where Zinn notes Emma Willard contradicting Jefferson's views that women's education should emphasize "the amusements of life ... dancing, drawing, and music" (as quoted in A People's History, 118).

Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen offer a thumbnail sketch of Jefferson the man in A Patriot's History. They mention his interest in wine in a single sentence: "After the war, as American ambassador to France, he developed a pronounced taste for French food, wine, and radical French politics" (133). For much of the targeted audience of the ultra-conservative Patriot's History, this sentence is sufficient to damn Jefferson.

My interest in Jefferson and wine was provoked last week when I started reading The Billionaire's Vinegar (2008) by Benjamin Wallace. There are indications scattered around the web that a film based on Wallace's book is in development. Reports of the movie rights being optioned were released in January 2008 before the book's release. Movie Insider gives 2012 as the tentative date for the movie's release. There's certainly plenty of drama in the story as William Koch spends more than a million dollars hiring former FBI investigators and similar sleuths to build evidence against Hardy Rodenstock, the man behind the sale of dozens of bottles reputedly once owned by Jefferson. Kip Forbes bid 106,000 pounds for the alleged 1787 Château Lafite Bordeaux that instantly became the most expensive bottle of wine in history. Koch spent many thousands less for the bottles that he bought.

The Billionaire's Vinegar opens with a description of the auction where Forbes set a record bid. Much of the story of the auction itself derives from "A Piece of History" in The New Yorker, 20 January 1986. This opening chapter narrates the development of the wine expertise of auctioneer Michael Broadbent, whose opposition to his portrayal later in the book led to a lawsuit that led to Random House agreeing not to distribute the book in the United Kingdom (one wonders whether the film will suffer similar barriers).

The second chapter focuses on Jefferson. I started this book as one of several Kindle samples dealing with history and culture of vitas vinifera cultivation, wine production, and consumption of the beverage that led to Benjamin Franklin's frequently corrupted line, "Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards, and which incorporates itself with the grapes to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy!" Freakonomics has a brief entry by the editor of The Yale Book of Quotations (2006), Fred R. Shapiro, concerning the origins of Franklin's quote, the process of authenticating this little detail of the past, and the corruption of Franklin's expression by beer-swilling enthusiasts.

The Kindle sample offers a few pages of this chapter, just enough to hook this angler. I shelled out the $12 needed to get to the end of the chapter and gain access to the notes. Having done so, I read the rest of the book. I learned more about the world of rare wines and forgeries than I had anticipated as among my interests. Having read this book, there's a lot more that I'll be attentive to when the next issue of Wine Spectator arrives in the mail box. Meanwhile, I'm now attending to more Kindle samples:


John Hailman, Thomas Jefferson on Wine (2006)
Charles A. Cerami, Dinner at Mr. Jefferson's: Three Men, Five Great Wines, and the vening that Changed America (2011)
Tyler Colman, Wine Politics: How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters, and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink (2008)

Another book of interest is not available as an ebook, but may arrive via the mail in hardcover sometime in the near future.

James Gabler, The Wines and Travels of Thomas Jefferson (1995)

Washington Wine: An Epicurean History

Missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman lived in the Walla Walla valley 1836-1847. Grapes were among the plantings in their garden, but they were teetotalers and did not make wine. They did, however, observe others drinking local wine during their visits to Fort Vancouver. According to Walter J. Clore's chronology in the appendix of The Wine Project: Washington State's Winemaking History (1997) by Ronald Irvine, the Hudson's Bay Company began growing grapes at Fort Vancouver 1824-1825. These were grown from seeds brought over from England and of unknown variety.

By the time of the Civil War, there were more than 80 varieties of grapes growing in the Walla Walla Valley. Italian immigrant Frank Orselli was selling wine by 1865. In 1876, the Walla Walla Statesman reported that he "has been experimenting in making wine" (Irvine and Clore, 406).

During Prohibition it was legal for a head of household to make 200 gallons of wine per year for personal use. A few commercial winemakers, especially in California, managed to limp along during these dark years making communion wine for the Catholic Church. Two years after the repeal of Prohibition, the Washington Wine Producers Association was established.

In 1960, Walter Clore and associates began grape growing research for Washington State University. This publicly funded research joined forces with private enterprise over the next several decades to develop the largest North American wine industry outside of California. Today, Columbia Valley wines are world renowned and the Walla Walla Valley bustles with tourists during the summer months. They come along the Lewis and Clark Trail, and via other routes, to visit the missionary graves at the Whitman Mission, and they come to sample and buy Washington wines.


My Wine Journey

Like the Whitmans, I spent a couple of years as a teetotaler in the 1980s. Fortunately, that period had come to an end by the time that I attended my first academic conference as a graduate student, the 1989 Pacific Northwest American Studies Association annual conference. It was held at Whitman College, and the Saturday evening banquet began with a bus ride west to Lowden (formerly known as Frenchtown). We had hors d'oeuvres, wine, and dinner at L'Ecole No. 41 winery, Walla Walla's third winery in the modern era. They were just beginning to garner accolades from the international community. I'm fuzzy on some aspects of my personal history, but I might credit the wine I had that evening for the fact that for the better part of the next decade, choosing wine instead of beer or bourbon invariably meant that I would choose a Merlot from Washington state.

I have not had a glass of bourbon since May, and I've drank very little beer. Credit wine. The past few years I've been developing the beginning of some interest in wine, and beginning to educate my palate. Perhaps four years ago, my wife and I sat down with Kevin Zraly, Windows on the World: Complete Wine Course (2007), reading and drinking our way through a glass each of Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, and Chardonnay. The past few months, I've been rediscovering the wines grown in my home state. I'm learning to pair some of these wines with food. Yesterday, we tasted some wine at the Spokane Public Market and came home with some Bridge Press Cellars Pinot Blanc--a Spokane wine made from Willamette Valley, Oregon grapes.

I'll return to wine history in a future blog post. For now, take a look at this gallery of meals and some of my own recipes.


Food and Wine Gallery

I learned to cook from my mother when I was quite young, and also learned some cooking in the Boy Scouts. In 1975, over a campfire I cooked two dozen eggs over easy without breaking one. In the past two years, I've been learning new cooking methods from Food & Wine Magazine. Recently I started photographing some of my meals and posting the images to Facebook. Many of the recipes come from the magazine. I was surprised, thus, to discover that my pairings with Washington wines rarely featured recipes from this magazine, but from other magazines and cookbooks, and mostly my own inventions. Even so, the influence of Food & Wine is evident in many details.

In late spring or early summer most years, fresh Copper River salmon becomes available in Spokane grocery stores. I usually buy one fish and get four or five meals--some steaks, some fillets. This year, as the price kept dropping due to an abundant catch, I bought three fish. I butterflied the second one and smoked it on my gas grill. It was topped with a rub of herbs and spices, but I failed to record the mixture. The salad is an old standard of fresh basil from the garden, tomatoes, and mozzarella cheese. I snapped the photo before drizzling the balsamic vinegar. A few spears of asparagus were grilled over the flame on one side of the grill as the salmon finished. These were first sprayed with olive oil and lightly sprinkled with salt and pepper. The wine was a 2008 Waterbrook Melange Noir (less than $15).

Waterbrook Winery was founded in 1984 as Walla Walla's fourth modern winery. When my spouse, my sister and her spouse, my nephew and his girlfriend, and I made our recent pilgrimage to Walla Walla for wine tastings, we began with a wonderful hour on the patio at Waterbrook. This meal with Alaska Sockeye and Washington wine was one month prior to that trip.

Our second winery on that trip was L'Ecole No. 41, where I had eaten dinner in 1989. My trip there with a bunch of college English and history teachers is the earliest memory that I have of eating dolmades. Since then, I have learned to make them, and they were hors d'oeuvres for the anniversary dinner that I prepared for my wife last month.

Naturally, we tasted and purchased some Merlot when we visited L'Ecole No. 41. We did not start with the Merlot. Prior to the trip, I had been reading Paul Gregutt, Washington Wines and Wineries: The Essential Guide (2007). He praises the success of L'Ecole's Semillon, and we began with that. My wife generally refuses to get interested in any wine that we can see through, but she liked the Semillon. She found the Estate Luminesce exciting! We returned with a couple of bottles of each. When she found some enticing summer recipes in an article in More magazine the following week, I had the beginning of a fine pairing. I made the cold cucumber and honeydew soup from "Picnics for Grownups," pulled an old walleye recipe from America's Favorite Fish Recipes (1992) for some Alaskan cod, and served one of the bottles of Luminesce.

When I started reading Food & Wine, they seemed obsessed with flatiron steak, and I've made a couple of their recipes. After the Fourth of July weekend included some heavy eating with family, we were in the mood for some salads. I made a simple green salad with my own something like Caesar dressing on Tuesday, followed it up with the cucumber soup and cod above on Wednesday, and on Thursday used some of Tuesday's dressing to marinade asparagus and broccoli.

Something Like Caesar

1 Tbs grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
olive oil (about 4 Tbs)
2 anchovies finely chopped
2 cloves garlic minced
1 Tbs Dijon Mustard
1 Tbs Worcester Sauce
salt and pepper

I put the cheese in the bottom of my salad bowl and cover it with olive oil. Then add the anchovies, garlic, mustard and Worcester Sauce and stir, adding more olive oil until the consistency seems about like bottled Caesar. A little bit of salt and a little more pepper, more stirring, and the dressing is done.

The quantity is too much for one salad feeding two or three people, so I spoon about two-third's of the dressing into a container that goes into the refrigerator. Leaving the portion that I plan to use, I then put my greens on top of the dressing and gently stir. Putting the greens on the dressing and mixing instead of the dressing on the greens is a technique that I've adopted from several recipes in Food & Wine, and from "Chef Bobby Flay's Salad Smarts," a sidebar in Food & Wine Annual Cookbook 2011 (42).

In preparing the asparagus and broccoli dish in the photo, I first retrieved the dressing from the refrigerator and let it come up to room temperature. Then, I prepared the steak marinade by putting a diced onion, rosemary, and sage in the Magic Bullet to mostly liquify. I spread the mixture on the steak and let it sit for an hour or so. I washed the asparagus, breaking off the thickest part of the stems, and washed the broccoli. In a plastic bag, I spooned some of the leftover dressing on the vegetables, closed the bag with plenty of air inside and shook to coat. I let the vegetables sit on the counter for most of an hour.

When it was time to cook, I scraped the onion mixture off the steak. I grilled the vegetables in a grilling basket. When they were nearly done, I started grilling the steak (about four minutes per side). Meanwhile, I sauteed the onions in some olive oil with fresh oyster mushrooms. After removing the steak from the grill, I sliced it, placed four slices on each plate and topped with the mushroom and onion mixture, then plucked a couple of cilantro flowers and set these on top.

The steaks and vegetable mix were served with a bottle of 2008 Waterbrook Cabernet Sauvignon.

At the Spokane Public Market, yesterday, we found some fresh Walla Walla sweet onions, and some lamb steaks from a local farmer. I mixed some dried mint with smaller amounts of cumin, and thyme, sprinkled it on the lamb steaks, and let set an hour.

I quartered half an onion, then sliced it. I sauteed the onion in olive oil until it started to brown, then added one-half cup Moscato wine and cooked until the wine evaporated. Then I added a handful of walnuts that I had roasted in the oven for eight minutes at 350 F.

While the onions and walnuts continued to brown on medium heat, I started the steaks, grilling seven or eight minutes per side. I poured a little white wine vinegar into the pan with the onions and nuts, and cooked until it evaporated. During the last two minutes of cooking the steaks, I threw about three cups of baby spinach leaves into the pan with the onions--stirring constantly until thoroughly wilted.

The lamb and spinach were served with a bottle of Woodward Canyon non-vintage red. The bottle had been opened earlier for the hors d'oeuvres, plank grilled figs with pancetta and goat cheese, a recipe from Epicurious.com. Woodward Canyon was Walla Walla's second modern winery, and it was the third we visited during our pilgrimage. Their non-vintage red was the discovery of the trip--an extremely nice wine for $19 per bottle.

Our wine budget accommodates very few wines above $20 per bottle, and generally only on special occasions. During a trip to Walla Walla this spring for a work conference, my wife picked up a couple of Spring Valley Vineyard wines that are expensive by our standards. We opened a bottle of 2007 Frederick for our anniversary. I fixed a four-course meal for the occasion. It was a study in pairings.

The first course consisted of dolmades (my recipe) and goat cheese stuffed grape leaves from Food & Wine. To be honest, the $50 bottle of Frederick did not seem particularly impressive with the hors d'oeuvres. It was good, but not great.

The second course was a beet, pickled cheery, and crispy shallot salad from Food & Wine. It clashed with the wine, bringing out bitter flavors.

For the main course, I grilled a Turkish rack of lamb from Jamie Purviance, Weber's Time to Grill (2011). Together with Frederick, the lamb was exquisite and the wine showed its grace and complexity. It was a perfect pairing. After the main course, we were satiated and delayed dessert for a few hours.

Dessert was another Food & Wine recipe, except that I added some goat cheese and nuts. We ate the dessert with a glass of the plum wine used to marinate the plums.

Art of History

Historical narrative imposes order upon chaos. The historian employs deception, omission, distraction, distortion, repetition, simplification, figurative language and images, slander, generalities, card stacking, ...

After the Carnage

A single train engine ran through a flock of sheep leaving a bloody mess. Then,

Presley saw again, in his imagination, the galloping monster, the terror of steel and steam, with its single eye, Cyclopean, red, shooting from horizon to horizon; but saw it now as the symbol of a vast power, huge, terrible, flinging the echo of its thunder over all the reaches of the valley, leaving blood and destruction in its path, the leviathan, with tentacles of steel clutching into the soil, the soulless Force, the iron-hearted Power, the monster, the Colossus, the Octopus.
Frank Norris, The Octopus (1901)

My recollections of reading this novel nearly twenty years ago are vague. McTeague (1899) is far more memorable. Never far from my consciousness is the scene early on when McTeague gets a billiard ball stuck in his enormous jaws, and the panic that shows in his eyes until the ball flies across the room after a hard pat on the back. Likewise, Trina's bedding with her gold remains an unforgettable image. Somehow, The Octopus carried less weight in that graduate seminar so long ago. Norris's grand novel offered a strong metaphor at the center, but a less memorable story than his story of a dentist. Did we really read the book?

In any case, another effort to get through Frank Norris's tale was stimulated last night when I began anew my reading of the classic biography of President Theodore Roosevelt.

In 1898, there had been twenty multi-million-dollar industrial trusts; now, there were one hundred and eighty-five. The proliferation evoked an image, in many minds, of a constrictive organism stretching out to every extremity of American civilization. Hence the title of Frank Norris's new antitrust novel: The Octopus.
Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (2001)

Holiday Cheer

I've been neglecting my work on A Patriot's History of the United States and A People's History of the United States this fall due to preoccupation with other matters, but I have not entirely forgotten this blog. For my two or three loyal readers anxiously waiting for more output, I can offer only links to two tidbits of heart-warming cheer.

Bob Dylan's "Must be Santa" from YouTube (thanks to Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz for sharing the link)

Rick Perlstein's "The 1960s, Refracted," published yesterday in The American Prospect.

Getting it Right

Still working on an article that no one will ever read for an encyclopedia that no one will ever buy, I just came across a few marvelous articles on the Blackfeet Nation's newly designed website. Last week, the site had a modest welcome page and no links. Today, the site seems almost complete.

The writing about Blackfeet history is fresh, fervent, and perhaps well-described as Blackfeet Nationalist. Under "Our History," the site offers an article, "We Come From Right Here." I had to read this as quickly as possible because I've long known that the Piegan Blackfeet insist they have been in Montana 10,000 years, while most books state they were migrating southwest fresh from the Canadian Prairies about the time they fell into a fight with Lewis and Clark on the explorers' return from Oregon in 1806. Some of the history books put the Blackfeet in Montana a century or two before that.

But scholars write books and give lectures and huff and puff about times in which they never lived, worlds into which they never stepped foot, and languages they can never hear spoken by the ancients they study. As an example of how little is really known about Indians in the pre-Columbian period, experts can’t even agree if the population of the Americas was 8 million or 112 million. If they know so little that they can’t get within an order of magnitude of each other, why bother guessing about anything else?
"We Come From Right Here"

The link may change, and the text, too. The site is still under construction. Readers of this blog may know what I think of these population figures. If not, click the "depopulation" link below and read away.

Worth Another Look

[Roland Barthes'] researches into the structure of narrative have granted him a conviction (or a reprieve), a conviction that all telling modified what is being told, so that what the linguists call the message is a parameter of its performance. Indeed, his conviction of reading is that what is told is always the telling. And this he does not arraign, he celebrates.
Richard Howard, "A Note on S/Z," xi

Patriots and Peoples is not a news blog, but an archive of articles concerning history (and occasionally current events). I offer this author's guide to those posts that deserve to live beyond the day they were written. Read a few. Make some comments. Join a conversation.

Conquest and Subjugation

Why is the English language the dominant tongue in North America?

"Superior European Technology"
Everyone knows that Europeans arrived in the Americas with technology that astounded the natives, except that it's a lie, or, at best, barely true in PolitiFact's sense of the term. The American indigenes were astounded at the noise and destructive power, and they sought a few firearms of their own. But guns were far from superior to bows and arrows--each had their merits.

"November 29: This Day in History"
Massacres and video games. No, this post addresses neither the addictive Facebook game, Slotmania, nor Cabela's "Big Game Hunter" for the Wii. November 29 is remembered as the day the first commercial video game was announced, one of the most horrific massacres of Indians, and a massacre of settlers by Indians that helped a territory gain statehood.

"The Burning of the Boats"
I learned in my first college history class how Hernan Cortés burned his ships to assure success in the effort to conquer Mexico. It's an old story from Spain, as Tariq, the Muslim conqueror of Spain in the eight century did the same on the point of land that now bears his name--Gibraltar (Tariq's rock). In the case of Cortés, this legend is false.

Infectious Disease and Human History

Errors of fact and interpretation concerning the depopulation of the Americas as Europeans clawed their way ashore led me to purchase a book and begin writing about it. But, then, maybe what I perceive as errors reveals what I have yet to learn. Self-questioning and questioning of a text that challenged the synthesis I learned in graduate school prompted the beginning of this blog. Consequently, many of my best posts address elements of guns, germs, and steel (as Jared Diamond puts it).

"Death in Jamestown"
The death tolls in thrillers concerning plagues are paltry compared to what actually happened to the English settlers in Jamestown through the first several years. That they died is well-known, at least among historians. What killed them is less clear, and the most common explanation is probably wrong. This article exhibits fine primary and secondary research, and is among my most popular entries.

"Origins of Malaria"
At the beginning of "civilization," or the neolithic revolution in Africa, malaria began to infect human populations. From that moment on, the most civilized were the most ill at least until twentieth century sanitation and medicine.

"Depopulation and Demography: A Patriot's History Bibliography"
This post is a gateway. It contains an annotated bibliography of the sources listed in A Patriot's History concerned with pre-Columbian demography. When I discuss a specific source in greater detail, there is a link. The authors of A Patriot's History claim to challenge the conventional wisdom of other historians regarding disease. Their challenge is found wanting due to a preponderance of errors.

"America was not a disease-free paradise"
The title of this post comes from a sentence in "Eden", a chapter in Shepherd Krech III, The Ecological Indian: Myth and History (1999). The sentence is quoted in Schweikart and Allen, A Patriot's History of the United States (2004) as adornment. Krech's research does not inform the narrative offered by these ideologically driven historians. They cite his work to make it look as though they have explored the best work on the topic of disease, but they invest the meaning of his words with their own irresponsible distortions.

"Depopulation: Ubelaker's Low Estimate"
No one knows how many people lived in the Americas in 1500, nor for centuries after. Thus, the efforts to estimate the aboriginal population of the Americas is fraught with controversy. This post offers a careful reading of the lowest credible estimate, and how the authors of A Patriot's History of the United States manipulate the data to minimize the effects of disease. This post is one example of reading a text through careful scrutiny of footnotes.

American Presidents, American Identities

"Madison on Human Nature"
My most popular post was written party to commemorate the 500th birthday of John Calvin by reconsidering his influence on American leaders and institutions of power.

"Washington, Adams, Jesus"
The United States is a Christian nation! That's what a lot of people say. One of the proof texts is the exemplary life and Calvinist heritage of our second President, John Adams. This post initiates my entry into this debate.

"President Polk and the National Honor"
Polk expanded the geographical size of the United States more than any predecessor save Jefferson. This post is a study of his political rhetoric that generates curiosity: what other President might I have been thinking about while exploring Polk's sense of honor?

In "Pioneers, Laborers, Slaves," I offer a historical perspective as grounds for critique of some of the rhetoric in President Obama's inaugural address. "Booker T Washington's White House Dinner" (among my most popular posts) elucidates the controversy that Senator John McCain chose to highlight in honor of Barack Obama's historic achievement during his concession speech at the end of the election of 2008.

Teaching and Learning

"Reflective Thinking, Teaching and Learning"
While thinking of undergraduate education, take a look at these musings concerning pedagogy of my professors as teachers, and of my teaching as a professor. Is that chiasmus self-critique? Read and judge.

This list will grow, and possibly change, as I reread all that I have written here. I'm open to suggestions.