Change You Can Motherf***ing Believe In!

As noted, the recent local and national electoral struggles have been physically and emotionally exhausting.

What to do afterwards is a problem in more than one regard. One problem is the tendency of the mainstream media and quotidian thinkers--during, and above all, after the campaign--to praise "bipartisanship." To be sure, the country accepts the verdict of the electorate and to that extent unites behind the new president, and to be sure, a certain measure of inter-party cooperation is essential to getting business done. But to elevate "bipartisanship" and "crossing the aisle" to an abstract ideal--as both candidates to some extent did as supposed evidence of their "credentials"--is also in some way deeply perverse: Why bother at all to have even two parties? (not least, when the ideological difference between them is rather modest, at least as measured by the scale of historical and global alternatives).

It was dismaying to watch the presidential debates and see the reaction of the designated pool of proverbial "undecided" voters respond in live time: Whenever one candidate criticized another, the graph of approval dipped downward. This had nothing to do with the merits of the argument at hand, and rather, with the mere fact of criticism. There are few more damning indictments of our political culture.

Hard political debate was a fact of life for American and French Revolutionaries, and the debates in the British Parliament are notoriously more boisterous than anything that occurs in our Capitol. There is something to be said, if only for the sake of basic honesty, for recognizing that people disagree about political issues, that these issues are important, and that we should cultivate and honor rather than paper over those disagreements.

How, then, to acknowledge irreconcilable disagreement and yet move on?

Sigmund Freud acknowledged the problem when, in his Civilization and its Discontents, he cited the immortal and incorrigibly ironic Heinrich Heine on the problem of enemies, reconciliation, and revenge. As Freud explained, "A great imaginative writer may permit himself to give expression--jokingly at all events--to psychological truths that are severely proscribed." Heine explained:

Mine is a most peaceable disposition. My wishes are: a humble cottage with a thatched roof, but a good bed, good food, the freshest milk and butter, flowers before my window, and a few fine trees before my door; and if God wants to make my happiness complete, he will grant me the joy of seeing some six or seven of my enemies hanging from those threes. Before tbeir death, I shall, moved in my heart, forgive them all the wrong they did me in their lifetime. One must, it is true, forgive one's enemies--but not before they have been hanged.

Freud himself but a few years later drew up a "hate list" of his own enemies.

Now conservative commentators are gnashing their teeth at the announcement that Rahm Emmanuel, member of Congress, Democratic Party official, and former Clinton administration staffer, will become Chief of Staff in the Obama White House.

Given all the predictable and nauseating banalities about "cooperation" and "bipartisanship," it was therefore a refreshing change to see this humorous piece about Emmanuel and real "hardball" politics.

Play ball!

Hampshire College Students Celebrate Election

The elections are over, and oddly enough, almost all of us on campus, whether faculty, staff, or student, report a feeling of exhaustion and distraction lasting several days--not entirely unpleasant, and certainly not a hangover in the literal or figurative sense.

Echoing the practices of the 1960s and earlier, the students were literally dancing in the streets (or at any rate, the open spaces and thoroughfares of the campus). One of the most striking things was that the spontaneous student celebration unknowingly encompassed so many historical practices--from the banging on pots and pans (here, mere exuberance of the type that we all practiced as children, though historically often as not a sign of mockery or dissent, from the early modern charivari to the Latin American political demonstration), ringing of the graduation bell (echoing the French Revolutionary tocsin that summoned the people to arms, but here reminding me more of the martial and then celebratory tintinnabulation in Prokofiev's score of "Alexander Nevsky"). The streaking was a bizarre throwback to the 1970s. Most surprising of all was the spontaneous singing of the national anthem. When was the last time that happened here? (sad commentary on several things). I see that similar spontaneous displays of patriotism emerged elsewhere in the country (though some have pointedly asked why they did not appear earlier and other other circumstances). Can anything else be better evidence of a potentially transformative moment in our history and culture? As the late philosopher Richard Rorty reminded us almost a decade and a-half ago, it is--or should be--a simple and sadly obvious truth that the left cannot hope to bring about real change in America if it defines itself as anti-American. Too often, the left just thinks in abstractions and talks in slogans, and is then surprised when things turn out disappointingly. (As any number of overeducated, trendily pseudo-radical colleagues kept saying to me in 2000 and 2004: "But I don't know anyone who voted for George Bush." Response: Well, maybe you should leave the cocoon of the Happy Valley, get out into the real world, and talk to some real people. You might learn something--at least better tactics.) Part of the strategical and moral genius of reformers such as Martin Luther King lay in the decision to define the call for justice as the embodiment of Americanism. (In their different ways, Edward Blum and Shelby Steele warn us, however, not to allow the enthusiasm of the current moment to trump rational analysis and realistic hopes.)

I myself missed these festivities (one is grateful for YouTube) because I was occupied elsewhere, namely, hoisting a few pints (as George Mosse used to say, e.g. with regard to eating curried rats: "it's all part of being a cultural historian") at Rafters Sports Bar: not "Rafter's" (after all, the place doesn't belong to some guy named Rafter--as opposed, for example, to the locally celebrated Judie's), a bizarre construction that I would expect of a first-year student rather than a seasoned newspaper reporter, especially one who has long lived in this town and should know the names of local establishments. In any case, the reporter was there with us and would have seen the sign when he entered the establishment--and unlike the rest of us, he was not even drinking; so no excuses there (sorry, Scott; all in good fun).

Rafters was the place where supporters of both Aaron Hayden's campaign for Select Board and Barack Obama's presidential campaign watched election returns, so we were able to celebrate two major victories in one evening (ironically or otherwise, the local Democratic Party gathering for State Senator Stan Rosenberg and US Representative John Olver, at Hickory Ridge Country Club, petered out early, prodding some well-wishers to return to Rafters for final national election results). By the end of the evening, most guests had also left Rafters to watch the remainder of the coverage at home. I stayed on, along with Jim and Penny Pitts (of Delta Organic Farm), former Hampshire colleague Anne McNeal, and former Select Board member Eddy Goldberg, to watch the Obama victory speech and subsequent coverage.  Those present invariably described it as a moving occasion.

Amherst: Hayden Wins Select Board Race; Community Sharply Divided Over CPA, Ballot Measure Fails.

Ace reporters and tense politicos await returns

The Victory Speech

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(a more detailed report on the implications of the CPA vote will follow)

7 November 1917: Bolshevik Revolution

"The Master Mind of Bolshevism:

A Russian Robespierre,"

Illustrated London News, 1919

The outbreak of the Bolshevik Revolution on 7 November 1917 (25 October in the Julian calendar, or Old Style--hence the term, "October Revolution" in Russian and Soviet usage) once seemed to many the dawn of a new age and the culmination of a string of western revolutions. Although the reform and then collapse of the Soviet system led to an opening of archives and minds on some fronts, it also triggered some defensiveness on the dogmatic left and a rather unpleasant triumphalism in many western circles, which have not furthered the goals of rigorous historical analysis. As Christopher Read (1998) noted:

the Russian revolution and its consequences remains a living topic, attitudes towards it being woven into the fabric of liberal capitalist self-justification and into socialist ideas of all varieties, not least the shrill polemics of radical groups which trace their lineage back to one form of Bolshevism or another. It has very much been a case of ‘tell me what you think of the Russian revolution and I’ll tell you who you are.’ Although Russia’s revolution is not as important as it was at the height of the cold war, the collapse of communism has only partially slackened the pace since Russia’s post-1991 ills are still being blamed primarily on communist mismanagement.

The near-simultaneous appearance of his book and that of Orlando Figes provided him with an opportunity to survey the similarities and differences in their work. Despite certain methodological similarities, they differ sharply in their assessment of revolutionary violence: Figes sees it as mere bloodlust, whereas Read finds that it was more rational and discriminating.

Finally, both of us would probably see ourselves as ‘post-revisionists’, as historians attempting to look at the revolution as ‘the past’, something which has gone, which has run its course, something which no longer has deadly importance for contemporary political stances. Although the significance of October will continue to be avidly discussed, it is less vital than it was at the height of the cold war. Only time will tell if these two books are seen as the last dinosaurs of an older style of writing about the revolution or the precursors of a new, more rounded and more dispassionate historiography.

A decade later, relatively little seems to have changed. Historiography has matured, but new subtleties and insights have barely penetrated the popular discourse.

The newspapers so far today seem to contain hardly a mention of the event. Of course, most of us have other, more recent political revolutions on our minds, and appropriately so.

The "October Revolution" page from marxists.org includes various contemporary communist accounts. Trotsky's reflections on the "Lessons of October" remains worth reading as a source of both history and tactical analysis regardless of one's own political stance. Among other things, it is useful to be reminded of the Lenin passage that he quotes:

“Too often has it happened,” wrote Lenin in July 1917, “that, when history has taken a sharp turn, even progressive parties have for some time been unable to adapt themselves to the new situation and have repeated slogans which had formerly been correct but had now lost all meaning – lost it as ‘suddenly’ as the sharp turn in history was ‘sudden’.” [CW, (Moscow 1964), Vol.25, On Slogans (mid-July 1917), p.183]

Duelling Inanities: Give Obama a Break. (Give me a break.)

The highly influential conservative blog, Little Green Footballs has been admirably vigilant in denouncing those who support or apologize for Nazi and neofascist doctrines, from Pat Buchanan to Eurofascists (such as the Vlaams Belang in particular), to groups whose purported  anti-Jihadism (a cause it otherwise espouses with gusto) crosses the line into racism. It goes overboard, however, when it lunges after a remark that Barack Obama made in a 2001 Chicago Public Radio broadcast:

Obama Compared America to Nazi Germany
POLITICS | Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 5:10:01 pm PST

[. . .]

At about 15:30, Obama compares what was going on in the United States during the time of Brown vs. the Board of Education to ... Nazi Germany. Yes, really. Here’s the quote:

“...just to take a, sort of a realist perspective...there’s a lot of change going on outside of the Court, um, that, that judges essentially have to take judicial notice of. I mean you’ve got World War II, you’ve got uh, uh, uh, the doctrines of Nazism, that, that we are fighting against, that start looking uncomfortably similar to what we have going on, back here at home.”

There you have it. America is close to electing a President who compares his own country to Nazi Germany.

Obama's point is simple and had been made by many intelligent and respectable figures before him: The irony that the United States was fighting a war against racist Nazi Germany with an army that segregated black from white soldiers was not lost upon some contemporaries. The NAACP pursued its so-called "Double V" campaign, for victory against fascism abroad and racism at home:  Patriotic military service, the argument ran, was not only right in itself, but also the best way to stake a claim for full rights after the War. The persistence of segregation even following the defeat of Nazism was thus an increasing moral and practical embarrassment. Obama clearly meant no more and no less.

Not to be outdone, Oliver Willis jumps overboard for a little dip in the sea of silliness when he declares:

The mental midgets of Little Green Footballs have gone so far in their defense of the indefensible that they would rather defend the concept of segregation - and maybe slavery too - in order for them to attack Sen. Obama.

Not surprisingly, LGF responds, with indignation, and a corresponding tone, that this is patently untrue:

The world’s dumbest leftist blogger puts his “scary racism” attack face on
[. . . ]
Not one word of that post defends segregation, and not a single comment from an LGF reader defends segregation.

The point is simple, and really not hard to understand unless you’re Oliver Willis: as bad as segregation was (and it was terrible), to compare America during the time of Brown vs. the BOE (when we were dismantling segregation) to genocidal Nazi Germany with its pogroms, death camps, and forced labor camps, and more than six million murders, is not just ludicrous and wrong, it is a morally bankrupt argument that verges on Holocaust denial.

And so the sniping continues.

It is sad: History provides a rich store of materials for exploration in their own right, or as arguments in political debate. The nation faces crises of the proverbial historical proportions. And this is the best we can do?

A Pint is a Pint?

Pewter bar tankard in one of the most popular or classic shapes--one low fillet, c. 1715-1820 ff. and standard handle, c. 1700-1820 ff.--by the prolific James Yates of Birmingham (1860-81).

* * *

While the superficial were worrying about being able to fill their gas taks, a deeper crisis was developing, almost unnoticed, but for the vigilance of Joe Sixteen-Ounce. 

NPR reports:

In Search Of An 'Honest' Pint Of Beer

by April Baer

All Things Considered, October 22, 2008 · A lager lover catches some Portland establishments serving pints that actually measure a few ounces under. Does a real 16-ounce beer exist in Portland, Ore.?

The historian can add that this is nothing new. The history of medieval and early modern Europe (for example) is replete with regulations for the enforcement of proper weights and measures. Closer to our own time, we find concrete and charming evidence of the problem in surviving artefacts. When the British government established the Imperial Standard of weights and measures in 1826, it also introduced verification marks, which can be seen not only on measures, but also on drinking vessels used in public houses, such as this one.  Soon after the introduction of the initial mark (a portcullis), verification marks indicated the monarch's reign.  Various county and borough stamps followed, until, in 1879, a standard system prescribed the monarch's crowned initials over a district number (and sometimes a letter, as well).  The Yates tankard here bears the number 525, designating Northampton County, which is a nicely appropriate detail, as we live in Hampshire County, the seat of which is Northampton.

Evidently the problems of our poor Portlander were nothing new, for Christopher A. Peal, writes:

We have assumed that workshop-produced goods were verified at the source, but subsequent measures sometimes bear a sequence and multiplicity of verification marks.  One wonders if certain inn-keepers were regarded with grave suspicion, and the authorities chivvied and hounded them constantly. I have seen about fifteen verification marks on a single tankard.

(British Pewter and Britannia Metal for pleasure and investment (NY and London:  Peebles Press, 1971), 68).

Our battered tankard by Yates displays a respectable (?) eight marks from Victoria to Elizabeth, prompting one to wonder whether dishonesty ran in the family of the publican.

Turning to measures: One of the most famous and popular is the classic Irish "haystack" measure (named after the roughly conical rather than American rounded) shape of the piles in which grains were accumulated in Europe; cf. the paintings of Monet). This one was made by Joseph Austin and Son of Cork, between 1828 and 1833. It held one noggin, which was the same as one gill (incidentally, pronounced as a homonym of the woman's name and not the breathing apparatus of a fish), equal to a quarter of a pint, or 5 imperial fluid ounces. These--in Peal's words, "really delightful and distinctive" (p. 168) measures were never exported to the United States and are therefore found here either because Irish immigrants brought them with them or because collectors later acquired them. The marks are of the reign of George IV (1820-30), when it was made, William IV (1830-37), and apparently, George V.

Measures also mattered because the United Kingdom was an assemblage of peoples and regions under Anglo-Saxon dominion. Scotland proudly resisted the Imperial Standard and clung to its own measures, until the English finally banned them in 1855. Those measures were also considerably more capacious, for the magisterial Scots Pint was equal to three Imperial Pints--or 60 oz. A gill in Scotland therefore meant something, as in this description of 18th-century Edinburgh:

"When St. Giles bells played out half-past eleven in the morning," writes one historian, "each citizen went to get a gill of ale, which was known as his 'meridian,' although before breakfast he had paid a similar visit." People did business deals, signed legal documents and wills, organized their university lectures, or planned a father's funeral with the help of a glass or a dram. Many of the city's most important intellectual movements began with a gathering in a tavern."
(Arthur Herman, How the Scots Invented the Modern World. . . (NY: Three Rivers Press, 2001), 191)

Footnote: A listener takes NPR to task for succumbing to the seduction of alliteration and using "lager lover" to describe the detector of delinquents when the issue actually involved ale: "Portland and this story are about ALE not lager. If you think that is a minor detail, you're full of it, all 16 or 20 ounces."

Touché. Such ignorance should be pilloried, and those whose striving for literary elegance outstrips their zymurgical expertise are deservedly hoist with their own petard. There is, however, an even more profound issue at stake. Knowing that there is a difference between two things is one thing (so to speak). Knowing which is better is quite another.

Civilized people know that, although most craft brews in the US are ales (and the beverage is an accepted style in some cultures, such as England, where I enjoyed many fine examples this summer), the bottom-fermenting lager, requiring cold storage during the ageing process (from the German verb and noun for storage and store: lagern; Lager) was traditionally the more sophisticated and complex product. Only with the advent of modern technologies in the post-World War II era did a pale and watery swill misleadingly marketed under the description, "lager," come to dominate the market of the industrialized countries.

I like an IPA as much as the next guy, but the classic beers from the classic beer regions of Central Europe, from Germany to Bohemia, are and remain lagers.  (In fact, the designation of Czech beer just recently won protection under EU law.)  

For those seeking an objective and comprehensive history of the brewing profession and culture in the United States, we may recommend the recent work by colleague and local historian Amy Mittelman: Brewing Battles: A History of American Beer.

And in the meantime, there is good news for all.  e!Science News reports:

College students often spend their free time thinking about beer, but a group of Rice University students are taking it to the next level. They're using genetic engineering to create beer that contains resveratrol, a chemical in wine that's been shown to reduce cancer and heart disease in lab animals. Rice's "BioBeer" will be entered in the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition Nov. 8-9 in Cambridge, Mass. It's the world's largest synthetic biology competition, a contest where teams use a standard toolkit of DNA building blocks -- think genetic LEGO blocks -- to create living organisms that do odd things.
(read the rest)

Don't rush out to the store, though.  This won't even conceivably reach the market for years:

Ironically, most of the team's undergraduate members aren't old enough to legally drink beer. But the reality is that with less than a month to go until the competition, the team has yet to brew a drop. All their work to date has gone into creating a genetically modified strain of yeast that will ferment beer and produce resveratrol at the same time. While the team does plan to brew a few test batches in coming weeks, these will contain some unappetizing chemical "markers" that will be needed for the experiments.

"There's no way anyone's drinking any of this until we get rid of that, not to mention that there's only one genetically modified strain of yeast that's ever been approved for use in beer, period," said Segall-Shapiro. "In short, it will be a long time before anybody consumes any of this."

In the meantime, we'll just have to stick with the usual stuff, for whose consumption the election will no doubt provide an appropriate occasions for partisans of all causes, victorious or defeated.

Much Ado About Nothing: Emily Dickinson Museum Landscape Restoration

A report in the Gazette this week seeks either to bring basic news to the public or to create a controversy that does not exist (depending on one's view of the local press):

Monday, October 20, 2008>

AMHERST - More than 200 large hemlocks that surround the Emily Dickinson Museum property could be cut down to make way for the installation of a historically accurate hedge.

Tentative plans (for nothing is set) of the Emily Dickinson Museum (full disclosure: my wife is the Executive Director), in the context of its historic landscape restoration plan, involve simple restoration of the landscape that the owners knew and desired. That shouldn't really be very controversial, except among those who have no real sense of history and historical perspective.

A full report will follow this weekend.

PreserveUMass Shines a Spotlight on the University: bright spots and dark corners

This piece follows on our recent postings concerning both modern architecture on campus and the larger question of the University's willingness to observe State laws on historic preservation.

Preserve UMass, which has led the fight to save historic buildings on the campus, issued the following statement over the Massachusetts Historical Commission's listserve on 4 October:

Preserve UMass is pleased to report that the UMass Amherst campus administration has taken some very positive steps on issues important to historic preservation.

1. The professional assessment of all buildings 50 years old or older is underway. We will be watching to see how the results will be used.

2. The campus administration has decided to put Old Chapel under the wing of the Library and restoration of its interior is now on the top of the Library's list of fund raising projects. This makes a lot of sense since the Chapel (never used as a religious chapel) started life as the first campus library.

3. When the renovation of the Campus Center was announced the administration stated that the architectural design of the original architect would be respected. Many people do not like the concrete buildings of the 1970's, but they represent American architecture of the period and nationally known architects were specifically solicited to ensure that their style would be included on the campus scene.

Meanwhile, we have been waiting for well over 3 months for a response from the UMass Building Authority (UMBA) to comments on a draft Memorandum of Agreement sent to the Authority by the Massachusetts Historical Commission (MHC) in June. UMBA finally responded at the end of last week. We were encouraged to see that UMBA will now agree to MHC's request to document, though photographs and written material, the remaining three structures of the Grinnell Arena Complex, namely, the wooden Victorian Horse Barn, Grinnell Arena itself, and Blaisdell House (the oldest Mass Aggie built structure left on the campus). UMBA had originally wanted to be held only to documenting the now demolished stucco cow barn.

UMBA up to now has been refusing to support one of the most important outcomes of the professional assessment of the campus' historic buildings - namely nomination of qualified buildings to the National Register of Historic Places. We were pleased to see in their response of last week that they will withdraw from that discussion and defer to the Amherst campus administration. We will take that lead and press for campus acceptance of nominations to the National Register.

The most discouraging news in the UMBA response of last week was their continued refusal to admit that the projects that they undertake on the UMass five campuses constitute a "state action." UMBA in oral presentations at two public meetings have made it clear that they "are not part of the University." Their refusal to accept the MHC view that their activities involving state land, state owned buildings, and funds from University issued bonds, are not "state" actions is hard to explain, unless you consider that they may want to erect a shield from environmental and historic preservation regulatory oversight. We will continue to shine a bright and very public light on this issue.

Joseph S. Larson
Corresponding Secretary
Preserve UMass

New England Celebrates Noah Webster 250th

Engraving of Noah Webster 

John Tallis & Company, 1834

(based on the portrait by S. F. B 

Morse [1823]:Mead Art 

Museum, Amherst College)

Given all the attention on next year's 250th-anniversary celebrations here in Amherst, it would be easy to forget that 2008 includes another such occasion: the birth of Noah Webster (1758-1843) on October 16.  And when that anniversary is marked in the press elsewhere, there is often scant mention of Webster's Amherst connection.

West Hartford, as Webster's birthplace, justifiably asserts its ownership, and has undertaken a substantial celebratory campaign. Yale University, where Webster studied and in whose vicinity he spent the last decades of his life, has scheduled at least a day of special and varied events (topics include not just the predictable dictionaries, but modern political campaigns and polling techniques).

Amherst institutions are doing what they can to ensure balance.  Special Collections at both Amherst College and the Jones Library have created exhibits that draw upon their rich holdings (and Amherst, like Yale, is throwing a little birthday party).

Webster spent only a decade of his life in Amherst (1812-22), and the achievements for which he is best known, such as his grammar, spelling books, and dictionary, were begun or completed in other locales.  Still, Webster's Amherst career was significant in its own right, for the history of both the town and the wider world. It was while living in Amherst that he worked on An American Dictionary of the English Language (completed in 1825, published in 1828). He played a major role in the creation of the Amherst Academy as well as Amherst College.  And not only was "Squire Webster" active in local and state politics. He was also a farmer and an agricultural innovator renowned for his orchards.  When the Town of Amherst built a new parking garage to the north of Webster's (no longer extant) residence on Main St. a decade ago, archaeological surveys revealed some pottery sherds dating from the early nineteenth century as well as the remains of a well. The latter seemed to correspond roughly to accounts claiming that it had been uncovered in the course of renovations more than half a century ago, but the identification had to remain speculative at best.

A final footnote:  Given that Webster fought so hard to shape and amend US copyright legislation, it is ironic that his name has become a mere merchandising label, which anyone can apply casually to any dictionary.   Name Wire blog includes a poem in Webster's honor:

October 13, 2008

An Ode to Noah Webster - From Brand Name to Genericide Victim

Oh noble Noah, you who stripped the u
From color and the k from music and who
Taught a nation how to spell and gave
Us a lexicon of the language of the brave
Rejoice! For Yankees all still celebrate
Your dictionary and your birth upon this date.

as well as this reflection on intellectual property:

the Merriam company, which bought the rights to Noah Webster’s dictionary after his death, lost control of both the “Webster’s” name and the original 1828 text.
As a result, several other publishers also produce “Webster’s” dictionaries and Merriam-Webster has to work hard to establish its claim to being the real Webster’s.

That may just make Noah Webster America’s first victim of genericide.

October is Archaeology Month

From the Massachusetts Historical Commission:

This is the 18th annual celebration of archaeology in Massachusetts. Archaeology Month features more than 60 events that promote awareness of the Commonwealth’s rich archaeological past through fun and engaging programs. This year’s theme is “Pointing to the Past."

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