Over the River and to Northampton? Did You Know Thanksgiving Poem Author Lived Here?

ICYMI: last month, I posted a short piece on Lydia Maria Child, best known as the author of "Over the River and Through the Wood." Less well known is the fact that she resided in our area as a member of a utopian and abolitionist community, a story preserved and told by the David Ruggles Center in Florence.

Read the rest.

Save the Fort: a textbook illustration of how historic preservation can link past and present

It was a distinctive sight: early nineteenth-century fortifications overlooking the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers on what was once the frontier. The greatest and most iconic remnant was the great Round Tower, said to be the oldest surviving building in Minnesota. It was moreover a sight I saw every week as a child, when my parents drove from suburban Bloomington to Saint Paul.

The Tower was so iconic in part because it was one of the few well-preserved parts of the original Fort. Added to and used continuously through World War II, the site deteriorated thereafter. Although designated a National Landmark, the Upper Post was, as I noted some years ago, placed on the list of "most endangered" historic sites in 2006.

There is a new call to restore and rehabilitate the Fort in time for its bicentennial in 2020, and the reasons are powerful. The editors of Minneapolis Star Tribune this week made a good case for this major effort and expenditure, citing, as I did several years ago, the striking range of historical episodes that the site witnessed, though these associations are unfortunately anything but common knowledge. It is logical for preservationists and public historians to concentrate on early history--the firsts--but if we do so at the expense of all that came afterward, we do both history and the present an injustice:

But representation of what came before and after the fort’s first decade would be added. There’s a rich story to tell: the long Dakota ties to the spot and the tragedy of the 1862 Dakota War; the fur trade of the 17th century; the fort’s significance to U.S. westward expansion; the presence of African-American slaves, including Dred Scott, and the contributions to two world wars. Attention would be paid to the fort’s role in diversifying Minnesota’s population, society CEO Stephen Elliott promises. For example, the fort’s use as an intelligence training center for Japanese-American troops during World War II led to the state’s first sizable Japanese-American settlement.

Telling more of Fort Snelling’s story should allow more people to see themselves in Minnesota’s past. That in turn should deepen their connection to this state and its future. The Legislature must act this year to make that vision a reality in time for the fort’s 2020 bicentennial. They shouldn’t let that chance slip away

This is exactly what historic preservation should be about.

What first prompted me to write about the Fort back in 2010 and 2011 was another childhood memory--or rather, a romantic legend. I had learned that Count Zeppelin made his first balloon ascent from Fort Snelling's Round Tower while serving as an observer with the Union troops during the Civil War. According to that scenario, he was hooked on aeronautics and the rest, as they say, is history. Or was it? Read on.

h.t. National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Weird Wild Weather Redux

I was going to mention the following item earlier anyway, but now I have a new and unwelcome reason to do so.  While sorting through some of my old Select Board papers this summer, I came across the October 2011 issue of The Beacon, the monthly publication of the Massachusetts Municipal Association.

A piece by Robert Marinelli of the Massachusetts Interlocal Insurance Association warning of "Dangers associated with storm cleanup" began: "Massachusetts has endured a number of significant storms in 2011 and will certainly see more adverse weather conditions before the year is over. "

Little did we know.

The piece was of course published in September, as a guide to the coming month. The destruction it referred to was thus from the summer tornadoes and Hurricane Irene. Little did we know what we would experience when "Snowtober" hit and crippled the region, leaving many of us without utilities for a week.

At the end of September 2011, I myself was still looking backward (particularly from the standpoint of historic preservation) to the summer emergencies, as well as to the so-called Great Hurricane of '38, the first major tropical cyclone to strike New England since 1869. It even (somewhat perversely, it always seemed to me) lent its name to our local high school sports teams. (I don't think we'll find any Louisiana, New York, or New Jersey varsity teams calling themselves "The Katrinas" or "The Sandys.")

But there was an earlier and even closer precedent. On 10 October 1804, a so-called "Snow Hurricane" struck the Commonwealth. It caused such widespread damage that it rendered parts of the landscape unrecognizable and, by destroying the forests, set back the shipbuilding industry by decades.)

I thought it would be interesting to mention the Beacon piece this year as a way of recalling last year's experience, but as warnings of Hurricane/Tropical Storm Sandy mounted, it came to seem even more eerily and ironically prophetic.
 Fortunately, we in the event dodged a bullet. Damage and disruption from the storm in the town, and in our area in general (vs. even other parts of Massachusetts or Connecticut), were minimal. Still, the fact that my fellow Select Board member Diana Stein lost a tree, which, in falling, in turn caused her to lose a car, reminds us that it doesn't take much to shatter our world of comfort and complacency. And it was in large measure luck as well as geography that spared us from the fate of New York and New Jersey.

The other good news was that the Town demonstrated it had learned from last year's experience. We handled last year's emergencies relatively well but in the process also discovered areas for possible improvement. To be sure, we were not ready to install a new generator at Town Hall this October, but the emergency response team was otherwise fully prepared. Communication, including use of social media and cell phone alerts, was improved. The Department of Public Works promptly cleared roads of fallen trees. And although over 1000 customers lost power, Western Massachusetts Electric Company restored it in all cases by the next morning.

Disaster preparedness remains among the highest priorities for Town administration and government, and we were glad to be able to use this year's scare as a chance to improve response techniques in principle without having to test them in practice as people suffered.

Weird Laws? Compared With What?

Fall Town Meeting is just over a month away.

Although we here in Amherst love to complain about the complexities of our laws and political process (how often do we hear that this or that proposed measure is "too difficult to understand"?), well, things could always be worse.

Just consider these bizarre Scottish laws:

• In Scotland, it is illegal for a boy under the age of 10 to see a naked mannequin
• In Scotland the law obliges citizens to allow whoever knocks on their door to use their toilet
• The head of any dead whale found on the Scottish coast automatically becomes the property of the king, and the tail of the queen
• Any Scotsman found to be wearing underwear beneath his kilt can be fined two cans of beer
• It is illegal in Scotland to be drunk and in charge of a cow
• In York, it is legal to murder a Scotsman within the ancient city walls, but only if he is carrying a bow and arrow
• In Carlisle, any Scot found wandering around may be whipped or jailed

Curious to know the backstory? Read the rest.

Small Beer? Student Culture of Yore

As a footnote to the recent posts on student culture and problem drinking culture, this account by Elijah Kellogg of commencement day in the early years of Bowdoin College, which opened its doors to students in 1802:

With dignified officials, sober matrons, gay belles and their beaux came also horse jockeys, wrestlers, snake charmers, gamblers, and vendors of every sort. The college yard was dotted with booths, where were sold ginger-bread, pies, eggnog, long cigars, beers small, and alas! too often for the good order,  beers large. While seniors were discussing Immortality, jockeys outside were driving sharp trades and over-convivial visitors were enjoying fist fights.

— cited in Herbert G. Jones, The Amazing Mr. Longfellow: Little Known Facts About a Well-Known Poet (Portland, ME: The Longfellow Press, 1957), 19

In other words, the proverbial good time was had by all, but not all were happy about it.

Mudslinging Massachusetts Campaign in Full Swing

With only a month and a half to go until the general election, the Massachusetts senatorial contest moved into high gear last week.

On Saturday, the Elizabeth Warren Senate campaign formally opened its headquarters in Northampton. The organization extended a courtesy invitation to the Amherst Select Board, and three of us were able to attend, along with a handful of other area elected or prospective officials, including candidate for Registrar of Deeds Mary Olberding.

Amherst Select Board member Diana Stein

Northampton Mayor David Narkewicz and D.A. David Sullivan confer outside the new HQ

It was a modest but spirited event, featuring a host of local and state officeholders and candidates: Northampton Mayor David Narkewicz, outgoing US Congressman John Olver, US Congressman Jim McGovern, State Senator Stan Rosenberg, State Representative Steve Kulik, and District Attorney Dave Sullivan.

Northampton Mayor David Narkewicz

Although Warren has strong support in our area, the message of the event was that this was an especially important election, and that every vote counted. Speakers underscored the reasons they thought a Warren victory was essential on the national as well as state level, and therefore pointed to the need to take the campaign beyond the reliably liberal Happy Valley to nearby towns and cities where the contest was more nearly even or actually tilted against the Democrats.

Their bottom line was that current Republican Senator Scott Brown was not to be trusted:

• First, although he likes to portray himself as an independent thinker and social moderate, his centrist credentials were slim: As several speakers pointed out, he had voted 5 times with the Democrats/for progressive causes, but on 10 times as many occasions, he had sided with the Republicans and the right. In effect, they asked, why one would settle for that when one could have the real thing, in the person of Elizabeth Warren? Or, in the pithy phrase of Representative McGovern, "Don't be such a cheap date!"

US Rep. Jim McGovern

US Rep. John Olver

• Second, they argued, there was no guarantee that one could expect even those 5 progressive votes in the future. As the speakers portrayed things, Brown, facing an election campaign, had been prudently politic in order to attract centrist or independent votes: If he won the current election, he would feel himself under no such obligation. Moreover, they argued, his seat could make all the difference in the larger contest for the Senate. Given the age of the current Supreme Court justices, they noted, the next president would likely be able to nominate several candidates, whose fate one would not care to entrust to a Republican-dominated Senate. And as if to underscore the point, they reminded the audience that the seat up for grabs again this year was the one long held by progressive Senator Edward Kennedy: "the lion of the Senate," as Steve Kulik put it.  (Whether his description of Elizabeth Warren as a potential "lioness of the Senate" will fit remains to be seen.)

State Sen. Stan Rosenberg

State Rep. Steve Kulik

In the meantime, the campaign has only intensified. Each side was convinced that it won the at times heated first televised debate. Soon after that, the temperature increased again. Supporters of Senator Brown again attacked Warren's claim of Native American ancestry, arguing that genealogical research had debunked the family tradition. Warren supporters fired back by citing Brown's (to many, ignorant and offensive) assertion in the debate (which he denied having made) that she falsely claimed to be "a Native American, a person of color, and as you can see, she's not." That Brown supporters were filmed at a rally making "tomahawk chops" and other vulgar or bigoted displays alluding to Warren's alleged Native American ancestry did not help. (The Cherokee Nation even stepped in.) But the Brown camp found new ammunition in the charge that Warren had illegally practiced law in the Commonwealth. Back and forth, so it continues.

Another forty days and nights of this may be hard to take.

It's already shaping up to be a dirty campaign. Given our somewhat peculiar and less than salubrious climate, we in Massachusetts joke about having a fifth season, the "mud season," between winter and spring. At this rate, we might want to think about adding one between the fall and winter, as well.

Fortunately, we on the Select Board don't have to worry about elections until next spring.

* * *

Update,  September 29

Barely had I written the above when, confirming what we all were starting to conclude, Republican ex-White House staffer and campaign advisor Matt Latimer came out yesterday with a piece in the Daily Beast, entitled, "Scott Brown-Elizabeth Warren Contest in Massachusetts: Ugliest Senate Race." As the subtitle put it, "Most candidates for high office have taken a page from 'Honey Boo Boo': focusing on spectacle, weird asides, and name-calling. And the worst example is the expensive and deplorable Senate race in Massachusetts."

Noting the irony that both candidates promised to run "clean" campaigns, and pointing to the examples I mentioned above, he summarizes the problem:

Neither [candidate] is an unknown entity to the people of Massachusetts. So what is this back and forth all about? And what do these charges and countercharges possibly mean about their capacity to govern?

Indeed. And what does that say about what they think of the voters' ability to make rational, informed decisions?

Conclusion:

Brown began calling his opponent “Professor Warren” as often as possible. This was considered a brilliant political tactic. After all, why would the people of Massachusetts ever want to be represented by someone who shows any sign of being educated? Warren, meanwhile, worked to depict Brown as a right-wing extremist while others started to question everything she ever said or did. The most recent charge is whether she practiced law without a license 17 years ago.

So with weeks to go and a narrow lead for Warren in most polls, the race has turned to the core issues that really matter in a country where millions are jobless: Whether she is a liar and he is a racist. Well, good luck on that, Massachusetts.  At least the rest of us don’t have to deal with such nonsense.

Speaking of Bad Science

Speaking of bad science ("the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down”), sometimes something is so bad that it's good—particularly when it actually is intended as a joke.

At any rate, I always enjoy reading the Tumblr and following the Twitter account of "Fake Science," which, as it explains, is a "100% Fact-Free Alernative" "for when the facts are too confusing."

Smithsonian has a nice little profile this week.

Unfortunately, some people have no sense of humor: the Houston school system recently banned Fake Science's book version as something "not permissable [sic] for you to distribute or your students to have."

Problem is, with all the bad science and scientific ignorance surrounding us today, it's getting harder to tell the parody from the reality.

New Construction? Name Your Poison. But Greenest is not Always Easiest

More than ever, the historic preservation movement is aligned with the sustainability movement in seeking to use what we have wisely in order to create healthier, more livable communities. As the new mantra goes: the greenest building is one that is already standing. Translated: Reuse an existing structure is environmentally preferable to new construction. The savings involve not just the materials themselves, but the energy and related costs: sequestered carbon that went into the original construction, demolition waste and its disposal, and so forth.

Marlboro Lights vs. Reds? We're still smoking

A recent much-discussed study by the National Trust for Historic Preservation provided empirical proof for this belief. That was the lead-in of an article in the Oregon Daily Journal of Commerce, which also gave me a nice pull quote illustrating the point:

When we say something is green and it gets some sort of accolade or LEED certification, in my opinion, what we’re really doing is simply smoking Marlboro Lights as opposed to Marlboro reds,” said Jeff Myhre of Myhre Group Architects. “We’re still smoking. We’re still paving. We’re still polluting. We’re still having an environmental impact on the planet, and that’s for any new building, period.

The principle is sound, and the quote serves as a great cautionary reminder. However, other cautions are also in order. There are times when new construction is simply necessary, or at the least, on balance the most practical choice. The new integrated science center at Amherst College (about which more in the future) is one such example. The green reuse principle could moreover be prefaced with the phrase, "all things being equal." Of course, things are not always equal. As the article points out, even assuming a structure is suitable for the intended purpose, adaptive reuse poses many practical challenges.

Portland, Oregon, the article explains, is a particularly instructive case because various factors complicate the equation of reuse with best practices. On the earthquake-prone west coast, for example, required code upgrades for seismic protection can be very costly, to the point that reuse is not economically viable or at least not attractive enough to owners or investors. In addition, one needs to take into account the nature of the specific structure, meaning both the type of building and the time required to recoup the energy savings of new, efficient construction. (Preservationists are well familiar with the latter issue from their attempts to caution property-owners regarding the exaggerated claims by manufacturers of replacement windows—which reminds me that I need to do a post on that one of these days.)

Do the homework, do the math

The general preference for reuse as a green policy must therefore be differentiated:

But environmental benefits of such projects can also be significant.

The “Greenest Building” study concluded that if Portland were to retrofit and reuse the single-family homes and office buildings likely to be demolished over the next 10 years, it could reduce carbon emissions by approximately 231,000 metric tons – 15 percent of Multnomah County’s total reduction target for the next decade.

The report compared environmental impacts of seven types of renovations – such as commercial to office, warehouse to office and warehouse to multifamily – in four cities: Chicago, Atlanta, Phoenix and Portland. It found that 10 to 80 years are needed for a new building 30 percent more efficient than an average-performing existing one to overcome the negative climate change impacts related to construction.

The article goes on to consider further details, including policy "carrots" that can make reuse more affordable and attractive. It also notes that the Historic Preservation League of Oregon will come out with a report on this issue in October.

So, no easy and automatic, one-size-fits-all answers, but a sound principle that should be remembered and applied first. As always, one has to do one's homework—and the math.



Reference: Lee Fehrenbacher, "The high cost of adaptive reuse in Portland," Oregon Daily Journal of Commerce, 21 August 2012.

Getting the Christian Right

I recently mentioned David Sugarman, "Melville in Jerusalem," Tablet Magazine, 16 August 2012.

It's a fine piece, but there is one odd phrase, describing Melville as:

 The philosophically inclined child of a Christian father and pious Calvinist mother.

Yikes. This is the sort of thing I get from my students (though from them, it's usually: "Catholics and Christians"). Last I checked, Calvinists were indeed Christians. And pretty serious ones, too. Ever heard of the Puritans? or at least the Pilgrims?

Although Tablet describes itself as "a new read on Jewish life," I don't think this is what was intended.

Charitably interpreted, perhaps Sugarman meant merely that the father was of conventional generic Christian disposition in contrast to the more fervent mother. But then, one should say what one means.

A little proof-reading here? Please?

Melville Update: Diasppointing Sales of Moby-Dick Followed by Disappointing Trip to Middle East

Rushing around in August, I somehow omitted mention of a nice little story relevant to my post about Melville and Hawthorne. The fateful meeting of those two men in the Berkshires in 1850 was the beginning of a fertile friendship, as Melville set to work on Moby-Dick, which he dedicated to Hawthorne.

Now, as we all know, Moby Dick, although one of the greatest American novels, was a commercial failure. It is with this fact that David Sugarman begins his essay on Melville in Tablet Magazine:

Herman Melville, the popular writer of adventure stories, all but lost his readership with the publication of Moby-Dick; or The Whale. “Mr. Melville has survived his reputation,” one critic wrote in 1851 of the “imposing” novel, with its diatribes, tangents, and verbosity. “If he had been contented with writing one or two books, he might have been famous, but his vanity has destroyed all his chances for immortality, or even of a good name with his own generation.” While some reviewers recognized the greatness of Moby-Dick, it failed to achieve the success Melville had hoped for, selling only a scant 3,100 copies during his lifetime. “Though I wrote the Gospels in this century,” he lamented to his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne, “I shall die in the gutter.”

However, the "failure" of the novel is just the point of departure (no pun intended) for the real subject of the piece: the resultant trip that Melville took to the Middle East in 1857 as a sort of spiritual and psychological compensation. (And in the process, Sugarman gets to talk about Pittsfield and the Berkshires and the present-day Call Me Melville celebrations.)

There is quite a tradition of such trips to the "Holy Land" in the nineteenth century. Mark Twain undertook one, too, and didn't like it much better. As the subtitle of the essay puts it, "The Moby-Dick author sought spiritual connection on an 1857 Holy Land trip. He found dust and rocks instead." Sugarman sees Melville's frustration as a reaction to both the objective decrepitude of the scene and the particular disappointment that he felt as someone who, although neither observant nor orthodox in belief, nonetheless intellectually and psychologically identified with the Christian tradition.

Worth a read. And a look, just for the whimsical image of the white whale's tail by Rockwell Kent superimposed on a historic photograph of the Ottoman-era walls built by Emperor Suleiman the Magnificent.

Reference:

David Sugarman, "Melville in Jerusalem: The Moby-Dick Author sought spiritual connection on an 1857 Holy Land Trip. He found dust and rocks instead." Tablet Magazine, 16 August 2012.

The Arab Muse: a new newspaper for Arab-American youth

I just received notice of The Arab Muse, a new online publication describing itself as "the first Arab-American youth based newspaper in the United States." (Youth is here defined as "college age or younger.") It promises varied content and perspectives in areas ranging from news to culture to opinion. The first issue has pieces on such topics as the Palestinian UN statehood initiative, the dilemmas of hijabis (especially in the summer heat during Ramadan), an earnest piece warning of the temptation of adolescent suicide, and book reviews. As is to be expected, the tone and level of the writing and analysis vary, too. It should be interesting and worthwhile to see what develops.

There is also a Twitter feed.

So, how's that rampant free-market capitalism thing working out for you?

"Ghosts With Shit Jobs": A little satirical piece on the consequences of globalization, outsourcing, and the decline of the US economy.



Hat tip:  The Propagandist

July Anniversaries: Lincoln Issues "Eye for an Eye" order, 30 July 1863

When we "celebrate" the anniversary of the Civil War, we do many things: we honor the courage of the soldiers, we commemorate the carnage, and we ponder the issues at the heart of the conflict and its legacy: first and foremost, slavery, race, and racial equality.

As the case of the Massachusetts 54th reminds us, African-Americans had to fight for the right to fight, and then fight for equal rights even within the Union Army.  Shortly after the now-famous engagement at Fort Wagner, in which the 54th took part, President Lincoln, reacting to Confederate enslavement and murder of Black Union troops, ordered reprisal in kind against Southern prisoners.

When I wrote about the anniversary last year, I was struck (among other things) that the Union would take such a strong stand, even as it did not offer its Black soldiers equal pay and equal opportunity for advancement. Although the retaliation order was never fully implemented, it highlights with unusual clarity the nature of the conflict, and it continues to prompt moral reflection on the nature of war.

Here is the original post, "Abraham Lincoln's Rules of Engagement."

Update

To flesh out this year's post, here is one contemporaneous report on the grim evolving policy, culminating in Lincoln's new order:

  The law of retaliation is formally announced by both the National and the Confederate authorities. Two Confederate officers were executed in Tennessee, June 9, by order of General Rosencrans, as spies found within our lines. The Confederates chose by lot, from among our prisoners at Richmond, two officers, and set them apart for execution, when ordered, in retaliation. Two officers of the enemy in our hands were then placed in close confinement, to be executed if the threats of the enemy were carried out. President Lincoln has also issued a proclamation declaring, in effect, that no distinction will be recognized in the treatment accorded to our white and colored troops who may be captured by the enemy. Every case of ill-treatment will be retaliated in kind: hanging for hanging, shooting for shooting, imprisonment for imprisonment. If a colored soldier, taken prisoner, is sold into slavery, a Confederate prisoner will, in return, be confined at hard labor in some prison until the colored prisoner is set free.

(Harper's New Monthly Magazine, September 1863, p. 559)

About that lawsuit . . .

Town Manager John Musante addressing residents' concerns at a contentious meeting held at Fort River School, April 6

 As I recently noted, a group of Amherst residents is suing the town's elected leadership and several top administrators: specifically, the Select Board, which functions as a collective executive; the Town Manager, who is the chief administrator; and the Comptroller and Clerk.

The Select Board and Town Manager strongly supported a proposal to create a large solar array on a closed landfill, seeing it as a major step toward sustainability and environmental responsibility, as well as a major source of revenue.  The measure also won overwhelming support from Annual Town Meeting. However, some residents in the vicinity of the proposed project vehemently opposed it on a variety of grounds, and have chosen to sue the Town in an attempt to block it.

The formal document indicating that I had been charged in the suit arrived while I was teaching in the Czech Republic.  A friend said she had visions of paper-servers chasing me around Prague, as in some thriller film.  It sounds, though, as if even in Amherst, little effort was made to effect personal delivery. As in the case of some other defendants, the documents were just rubberbanded to the handle of a storm door. Not exactly "The Bourne Identity."

The Town has now issued a formal response to the suit. Diane Lederman of the Republican reports here.

Resources

• Solar opponents created this website to present their concerns
• This page of the official Amherst website details the Town's plans and responses to questions or concern from the public


[updated with links and image]

The Civil War, Massachusetts, New York, and "Ancient Hatreds"

We are about to be inundated with coverage of our Civil War, which took up a mere four years in the history of a country then not even a century old. As recently noted, the origins and consequences of that war still divide us. And yet, there is hope for change.

By contrast, as journalists are constantly reminding us, the world is filled with and vexed by "ancient hatreds" that cannot be so easily cured:

African American Student Leadership Group Condemns Appropriation of "Apartheid" Terminology

The Vanguard Leadership Group, which describes itself as "a leadership development academy and honor society for top students at the nation’s historically black colleges and universities," has challenged the use of the "apartheid" label in discourse surrounding the Arab-Israeli conflict. It calls the analogy false and offensive and therefore destructive of true dialogue and efforts to achieve peace and reconciliation. JTA reports:

Black students group slams ‘apartheid’ abuse

April 8, 2011

(JTA) -- An African American students group took out ads in college newspapers blasting "Israel Apartheid week" organizers for abusing the term.

In a full page entitled "words matter" and appearing in the newspapers on April 7, Vanguard Leadership Group accuses Students for Justice in Palestine of a "false and deeply offensive" characterization of Israel.

"SJP has chosen to manipulate rather than inform with this illegitimate analogy," Vanguard says in the ad, signed by its members attending a number of historically black colleges. "We request that you immediately stop referring to Israel as an apartheid society and to acknowledge that the Arab minority in Israel enjoys full citizenship with voting rights and representation in the government."

The Jerusalem Post in the meantime adds more detail:

The letter continues to state that “[p]laying the ‘apartheid card’ is a calculated attempt to conjure up images associated with the racist South African regimes of the 20th century,” and calls the strategy “as transparent as it is base.”

“Beyond that, it is highly objectionable to those who know the truth about the Israelis’ record on human rights and how it so clearly contrasts with South Africa’s,” the letter reads, noting that under apartheid, black South Africans had no rights in a country in which they were the majority of the population. . . .

“Decency, justice, and the hope of peace and reconciliation in the Middle East compel us to demand an immediate cessation to the deliberate misappropriation of words and of the flagrant mischaracterizations of Israel,” the letter concludes. “Your compliance with this request will be viewed as a responsible and appropriate first step toward raising the level of discourse.”

Yeah, but what would they know, right?

* * *

Update

Here is an image of the actual advertisement.

[Updates 9 April, 13 April]

Karl Marx: No Pain, No Gain! (I paraphrase)

"no royal road to science"

Occasionally, when students insist that a reading assignment is difficult or complain about the amount of work (in fact a reasonable amount, if one stops to consider that college is or should be the equivalent of a full-time job), or when I come across a badly written and badly reasoned news article or policy document, I ask myself what the best advice or response is. One could do worse than to cite Karl Marx.

From the Preface to to the 1872 French edition of Capital  l:

To the citizen Maurice Lachâtre

Dear Citizen,

I applaud your idea of publishing the translation of “Das Kapital” as a serial. In this form the book will be more accessible to the working class, a consideration which to me outweighs everything else.

That is the good side of your suggestion, but here is the reverse of the medal: the method of analysis which I have employed, and which had not previously been applied to economic subjects, makes the reading of the first chapters rather arduous, and it is to be feared that the French public, always impatient to come to a conclusion, eager to know the connexion between general principles and the immediate questions that have aroused their passions, may be disheartened because they will be unable to move on at once.

That is a disadvantage I am powerless to overcome, unless it be by forewarning and forearming those readers who zealously seek the truth. There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits.

Believe me,
dear citizen,
Your devoted,

Karl Marx
London
March 18, 1872

April Fools Us (but spring is nonetheless here)

I was excited by the arrival of spring weather and sentiments even before the formal onset of the season. Indeed, in the first week or March, it seemed that spring was, de facto, if not de jure, here.

The first harbinger was the arrival of the eagerly awaited garden catalogue from Andrew's Greenhouse, which arrived at the start of March.

It was followed, in short order, by the appearance of daffodils and crocuses.

7 March

17 March

I hoped too soon, of course, for April again proved to be the cruelest month (or at least, to play the cruelest meteorological jokes on us.

1 April

1 April

1 April

Of course, this will no doubt increase our seasonal and chronic misery by feeding the fantasies of climate-change-denying loons, who are unable to distinguish between weather and climate. On the bright side: they are wrong. And: people on all sides of the climate debate could welcome the return of warm and pleasant weather.

What a difference a day makes.  By Saturday, the snow had disappeared, the sun was shining, and the temperature rose above 50 degrees F, the perfect circumstances under which to launch the "Poems Around Town" program of the Emily Dickinson Big Read 2011.

New England Elections: Town Meeting, Select Board. . . Hog Reeve?!

This post originated in a Twitter exchange with historic preservationist and genealogist Marian Pierre Louis. Back in January, on her blog, "Marian's Roots and Rambles," she wrote:

In The Handbook of Medway History, 1713-1913 by Orion T. Mason (1913), I came across the following interesting tidbit:

"For many years all newly-married men were elected "Hog Reives" at the annual April meeting." This item was dated 1800.

It occurred to her, "Now this makes for a very interesting marriage record substitute!" i.e., absent other documentation, it could enable one to date the beginning of an ancestor's matrimonial ties within a year or so. She went on to ask,

I wonder if this was a common tradition in other Massachusetts towns. Let me know if you have come across traditions like this for newlyweds in your research.

Nothing I like better than a little historical challenge.

J. F. Jameson's Records of the Town of Amherst from 1735 to 1788 (Amherst, 1884) mentions the office and notes, in the introduction (iii-iv), "Of the Yankee sense of humor, we see little; the annually-recurring joke about the hog-reeves seems to have been ever fresh."

Well, that's all well and good if you live in the late nineteenth century and get the joke (imagine trying to figure out who Charlie Sheen was in 2111), but the rest of us latter-day folks need some context.

The standard (antiquarian and ponderous but indispensable; glad someone else did that work so I wouldn't have to) Carpenter and Morehouse History of the Town of Amherst (1896) is even less illuminating. It refers to the office in some six places, but does not even describe it, much less, explain why it was the subject of a running joke.

We are all familiar with the disparaging characterization of a political candidate as someone "who could not be elected dog catcher." The case of the hog reeve is similar, though with a bit of a twist.

During election season last fall, Christopher Beam, over at Slate, pursued the matter, finding:

The insult that someone "couldn't be elected dogcatcher" appears to have originated in the late 1800s. In 1889, the Weekly Courier Journal in Louisville noted that then-president Grover Cleveland was "so unpopular in Washington that he could not be elected dog catcher for the district." A year later, a letter to the New York Times attacked a politician who "could not get elected on his own popularity and without the aid of his 'machine' to the office of dogcatcher were it an elective one" (emphasis added). Dogcatcher is also sometimes used as shorthand for the lowest-level political office. For example, in 1979 National Journal wrote about the collapse of a magazine "designed to appeal to elected officeholders from U.S. Senator to dogcatcher."

He also points out that, in most locales, the position—nowadays called "animal control officer"—is appointed rather than elected and, he hastens to add, requires professional training. (in Amherst today, it is neither appointed nor elected; information on lost and found pets here.)

Now back to the hog reeve.  A "reeve," according to the Oxford Etymological Dictionary, was

1. Chiefly in Anglo-Saxon and later medieval England: a supervising official of high rank, esp. one having jurisdiction under a king;

a. The chief royal representative in a county, who administered royal justice and collected royal revenues;

There were eventually various types of lower-ranking reeves: town-reeves, port-reeves, and so forth. We are all familiar with the "sheriff," derived from shire-reeve (remember Robin Hood?).

Two recent sources explain the nature of the New England hog reeve and the humor associated with the post.

For example, a 2008 article in New Hampshire Magazine says, "The Hog Reeve rounded up all stray pigs and fined their owners fifty cents. Later the office became a joke. The voters would often elect the prissiest man in town Hog Reeve. In the 1850s Charlestown elected their minister, Dr. Whittaker, to this office. In some towns the most recently wed young man was elected Hog Reeve. People knew a good time back then."

And the Old Sturbridge Village Glossary of New England Town Officers, noting that the office was mandated by state law, explains, "Towns could decide not to enforce this law by a vote in town meeting, and many did, leaving hog reeves with nothing to do. Thus it became traditional, as a running joke on the status of matrimony, for men to be elected as hog reeves during their first year of marriage."

Now you know.


Update

As chance would have it, the topic of stray animals and the heroic officials who chase them down became topical again in western Massachusetts in 2012. Read the rest here.

Justice for Students in Parody (JSP)

"Israeli Apartheid Week" (IAW) here at Hampshire is over, and we are now on spring break, but the nice thing about a "week" that lasts for 14 or (depending on how one counts) even 20 days is: it is still bound to be going on somewhere in the world. O seculum! O literae! Iuvat vivere.

As I noted a while back, when Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at the University of Pittsburgh posted video documenting their efforts to disrupt a talk by Israel Defense Forces Reserve Sergeant Benjamin Anthony in January, an opposing student group created a parody remix on YouTube.

And so, when Hampshire Students for Justice in Palestine (HampshireSJP) imitated both the disruption and the promotional video—"Not Silent. Sgt. Benjamin Anthony [IDF] at Hampshire"—someone created a corresponding parody: Hampshire SJP Protest Fail.