From the Protest Rally Against the Hampshire College Flag Policy

In response to students' anger and fear in the wake of the presidential election and their protests that the American flag represented racism and oppression, Hampshire College controversially decided on a temporary removal of the national symbol in hopes of calming the situation and fostering dialogue.

The public reaction surprised the College (but hardly anyone else): incredulity and outrage.



"Peaceful Demonstration of Freedom--Stand With Old Glory"

Amherst’s Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 754 organized a mass protest on the Hampshire College campus for the Sunday after Thanksgiving (November 27). A large crowd from around New England--particularly but not exclusively veterans and their families--gathered at the entrance to the College on Route 116. Although the press put the size of the crowd at around 400, the organizers, who issued over 5,000 invitations via social media, estimated attendance at 1,500 to 2,000: which is to say, greater than the annual enrollment at the College.

I was present, along with a few other members of the faculty and student body.

 Veterans represented multiple generations and wars.

  
Not exactly the alt-right

In the wake of the presidential election and the tensions that it engendered, many in the Hampshire and wider Amherst community (who did not bother to attend or were scared to do so) leaped to the conclusion that the event was a gathering of right-wing extremists and hatemongers. On the contrary, the organizers took care to avoid giving the formal program any particular political slant. In fact, the most prominent speakers were centrist or left-liberal Democratic politicians: State Rep. John Velis (Westfield), Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno and Councillor Kateri Walsh, and Northwestern District Attorney David Sullivan. Several of the speakers were non-white and immigrants. A member of the local veterans' color guard was transgender.

not exactly the "alt-right"

Outside interference?

The presence of the regional political figures caused no little consternation among the Hampshire faculty, who complained in high dudgeon that outsiders were interfering in our internal affairs and attempting to intimidate the College. It is an ironic argument. The politicians were simply exercising the same right of free speech about an issue of deep concern as the students who burned the flag and the President who banned it. (And, for the record: in my many years of working here, I had never known the College to bow to the wishes of any outside force, least of all, provincial politicos.)

Still, even neutral outsiders remarked on the unusual presence of these visitors. (Most expressions of surprise focused on the presence of Mayor Sarno, who, as a friend of mine from beyond the walls of the academy drily observed, "has never even come to pee in Amherst.") The most parsimonious explanation is, however, generally the most plausible. (It is possible to overthink an issue.) The cynical consensus among outside observers was that the aim was grandstanding rather than intimidation. Seeking to score easy points with their base is, after all, what politicians do. But politicians also have convictions. The idea that the flag had powerful emotional meaning for them, and that they therefore cared sincerely and deeply about its presence or absence, is a difficult one for the academic mind to grasp.

Rep. Velis is not just a politician from the Pioneer Valley, but also an Afghanistan veteran. As for DA Sullivan, he is a frequent attendee at events in Amherst, and he moreover has extensive professional experience in military affairs, having served as a civilian lawyer for service personnel and most recently, working to establish a new veterans' court providing treatment for trauma disorders and substance abuse. Mayor Sarno, too, paid tribute to the veterans, but he explained that the flag had further personal significance for him.


The flag of a nation of immigrants

Sarno was one of several speakers who highlighted the role of immigrants. The flag had special meaning for him as the son of Italian immigrants who had experienced Fascism and survived the Nazi occupation of Italy in hiding. To them it had been a symbol of hope and freedom.

Event organizer Victor A. Nunez Ortiz came to the United States when his family fled the Salvadoran civil war. He served in the Marines even before becoming a US citizen. He refers to this experience when introducing the next speaker.

Another veteran who had served in the US military as an immigrant non-citizen was Veasna Roeun of Connecticut: a survivor of the Cambodian genocide.

A Progressive Speaks

Here, well known local civic and political figure Bonnie MacCracken speaks. She read a poem about Blue Star Mothers. Bonnie, a candidate in the recent Democratic primary election for state representative from the third Hampshire district, is a member of the Democratic State Committee and has long been active on behalf of progressive social causes, among them racial and economic justice (especially housing issues) and early education.


And the right?

The red meat right-wing exception in this program was the brief address by Mount Holyoke student and conservative activist Kassy Dillon, who focused her remarks on a critique of the College and its students. She explained, "I wrote the first story" about the flag flap, adding that the Hampshire student who had passed on the news to her was now "being bullied by other students."

Racism and extremism?

Despite repeated assertions that Confederate flags and other racist symbols were on display, neither I nor anyone I subsequently spoke with saw them--and no one has to date produced any photographic proof. It does not seem unreasonable to conclude--given the nature of the controversy, and what I saw--that many in the crowd were to the right of center, but that is not the same thing as "alt-right" "white supremacists."

To be sure, there were a few displays that I could I could have done without: this anti-UN flag, for example (though without talking to the owner, it was impossible to tell whether it represented standard arch-conservative gripes about "anti-American" multilateralism or something notably more rancid).

I also spotted several "Don't Tread On Me" flags. The right-wing "Tea Party" movement adopted the Gadsden Flag (as it is more properly called) in 2010, though as everyone should know (and Mount Holyoke historian Joseph Ellis explains), it is a venerable emblem of the American Revolutionary era, appropriated in the meantime by various groups as a symbol of protest.

On the whole, the tone was respectful of the College. Of course, the organizers could not regulate who showed up, and a few of the signs were obnoxious and juvenile. One placard (referring to Vladimir Putin or just left over from the Cold War?) advised Hampshire students: if you don't like it here, go get an education in Russia. Another, in what the creators no doubt considered a masterpiece of wit, relied on hackneyed scatological imagery.

By contrast, this sign, playing on the Hampshire College motto, took a lighter approach, and was perhaps marginally more effective.

The organizers had stressed the need for civility prior to the event:

this a PEACEFUL DEMONSTRATION OF FREEDOM as citizens of our United States of America. . . Families will be present and order is to be expected.

At the rally itself, they reiterated this request and moreover made a point of thanking the College for allowing them to meet on campus property. Here, veteran and Purple Heart recipient Micah Welintukonis of Connecticut, who presided over much of the event, offers to provide microphone time to the President or any other administrators who might be present (none were) and then leads the crowd in the chant, "Raise that flag!"

A confrontation

At one point, though, one saw how things might have taken a more dangerous turn. Toward the end of the event, the organizers wanted the participants to assemble near the large Hampshire College sign for a group photo that they hoped would go viral. As they asked people to move away from the sign so that the wording would be visible, we saw a young man sitting on the ledge in front of it, giving people the finger with both hands. The organizers, at first thinking he was one of their own, mocking Hampshire College, chided him for his vulgarity. It turned out, however, that he was a Hampshire student flipping off the demonstrators rather than the College and seeking to spoil their photo op. The crowd became more agitated. Several people seemed prepared to remove him by force and others tried holding a flag in front of him to block him from view but the speaker urged them to remain peaceful and let the campus police provide order. The speaker engaged in some mild taunting of the hapless student but also offered him the microphone. After a few minutes of this standoff, things quieted down. Subsequent press reports described some uglier aspects of the confrontation, but from where I was standing at the time, near the podium, I could see and hear none of that.

Coming to a close

As the rally wound down, attendees sang "God Bless America."

In the low-key conclusion to the event, the speaker reminded attendees that "we are all Americans" and urged them to tell the College: "raise our flag!"

Postscript

The veterans had planned to return a week later for a second rally, but when the College suddenly announced on December 2 that the flag was going back up, they canceled the event as what they called an "act of faith":

Indeed, the best outcome of this sorry mess would be a dialogue between veterans and campus community, and there are some signs that this may in fact occur.

Hampshire Flag Watch: Going, going, . . .gone?! and . . . now back?

By now practically everyone in the country has heard the story, regardless of whether you read the New York Times or watch Fox News. It was with a mixture of fascination and horror that I watched the slow-motion political train wreck that was the Hampshire College flag controversy unfold over more than a month. 

Another metaphor that we use for a self-inflicted, completely avoidable disaster is: own goal.

For anyone who has been in a coma or perhaps just shell-shocked by the Trump victory and therefore unable to read a newspaper, watch TV, or surf the web, here's the elevator-speech version.


Take Down the Flag!

Hampshire student chalk protest: Take Down the Flag

The election of Donald Trump as President on November 8 prompted some Hampshire College students to express their opposition to the institution’s flying the US flag, which they denounced as a symbol of racism and oppression. College President Jonathan Lash listened politely but did not act on their demand. The next night, a group of students lowered the US flag to half-staff. On the night of 10 November, parties unknown burned the flag. It was the eve of Veterans Day. On November 12, the Trustees, having restored the flag, announced that they would fly it again at half-staff in deference to student concerns: “both to acknowledge the grief and pain experienced by so many and to enable the full complexity of voices and experiences to be heard.”

It was immediately clear to me it was an untenable policy: it simply could not last. I decided to watch what happened, for the historical record.

Day 3 (14 November)

For Day 4, the middle of the first week, I thought three shots were in order: 

general, close-up and night-time

Day 5 (16 November)

Day 6 (17 November)

Day 7 (18 November)

This is the only "dialogue" or "conversation" about the flag that I personally witnessed. (Evidently, the promised process happened in a series of "focus groups," but the vast majority of us were not involved. I certainly heard nothing.)




Negative space

Well, that didn't take long. The only thing more peculiar than the decision to fly the flag at half-staff for an extended period was the policy that soon replaced it. After only a week, on 18 November, the College announced, “we will not fly the U.S. flag or any other flags at Hampshire for the time being.” This, we were told, was so that we could discuss the meaning of the flag without the disturbing presence of (wait for it . . . ): the flag.

19 November: naked and alone

Raise the Flag!

A few days later, the press descended on the College.

November 22: filming an absence

When the outside world learned of the decision, the most common reaction was one of anger and incomprehension. The only surprising thing was that the College, with all its intellectual wattage, was, well . . . surprised. Any ordinary person would have seen this coming.

Amherst’s Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 754 organized a mass protest on the Hampshire College campus on 27 November, the Sunday after Thanksgiving. People from around New England--particularly but not exclusively veterans--gathered at the entrance to the College on Route 116. The organizers estimated attendance at over 1,500 to 2,000: which is to say, greater than the typical annual enrollment at the College.

The event was nonpartisan in intention (and largely in practice) and the speakers included several left-liberal Democrats. I attended the rally to observe for myself. Although some subsequent press reports described at least one confrontation involving aggressive or offensive behavior, what I saw was by and large respectful and disciplined. The organizers stressed the need for civility and made a point of thanking the College for allowing them to meet on campus property. They offered to provide microphone time to the President or any other administrators who might be present (none were).

Press coverage, both local and national, was heavy.

The College soon faced a torrent of abuse in the form of angry phone calls and emails, as well as far harsher talk on social media--much like what the Town itself has experienced in the wake of controversies over flying the 9-11 commemorative flags or other contentious debates.


November 29: I have no idea what these temporary fences near the flag were intended to accomplish.

Back to normal?

On 2 December, the the College suddenly announced that the flag was being returned to its customary position on the main campus flagpole. Crisis over, but no problems solved.

After I took my pictures, a woman passing by said, "a lot of people doing that today."


There is a well known political dictum: when you're explaining, you're losing. The College has created a dedicated web page to explain its recent flag policy to the public.

* * *

Coming attractions 

- photos of the protest rally against the College
- a more detailed look at the controversy

December 7 1941: "AIRRAID ON PEARL HARBOR X THIS IS NOT DRILL"

This simple message announced the attack on Hawaii 75 years ago.

The Library of Congress reproduces the document in its post for the anniversary:

"A hurried dispatch from the ranking United States naval officer in Pearl Harbor, Admiral Husband Edward Kimmel, Commander in Chief of the United States Pacific Fleet, to all major navy commands and fleet units provided the first official word of the attack at the ill-prepared Pearl Harbor base. It said simply: AIR RAID ON PEARL HARBOR X THIS IS NOT DRILL"


As chance would have it, when I shared this post on Twitter, one of my tweeps informed me that the Museum of World War II in Natick also has a version of the document in its collections. (Another destination to add to my list.) It would be interesting to know how many others are extant.


Among other items mentioned in the LOC blog post:

• an annotated script from the NBC news broadcast on that day

• a description of folklorist Alan Lomax's response to the crisis. Best known today as a collector and chronicler of folk music, he put his ethnographic bent to work in the service of oral history, recording the reactions of ordinary people across the country.

The post includes this sample:

My first thought was what a great pity that… another nation should be added to those aggressors who strove to limit our freedom. I find myself at the age of eighty, an old woman, hanging on to the tail of the world, trying to keep up. I do not want the driver’s seat. But the eternal verities–there are certain things that I wish to express: one thing that I am very sure of is that hatred is death, but love is light. I want to contribute to the civilization of the world but…when I look at the holocaust that is going on in the world today, I’m almost ready to let go…”

My Little Book-Historical Connection to Alice's Restaurant

This book is my copy of the English edition of Ernst von Salomon's bestselling Fragebogen (The Questionnaire [1951]).

Von Salomon (1902-72) was a German right-wing extremist of the interwar years, implicated in several acts of political violence, including the assassination of German Prime Minister Walther Rathenau. Though he never gave up his extremist beliefs, he moved in heterodox arch-conservative circles and claimed that he never became a Nazi. He was nonetheless briefly imprisoned as one after the War. Several years after his release, he published his memoirs, for which he sarcastically employed the format of the lengthy questionnaire (Fragebogen) on past political activity that the Allied occupation forces used to implement their de-Nazification policy.

The translator is the World War II intelligence officer and novelist Constantine Fitzgibbon, who also produced the English version of the memoirs of Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Höss. Ironically, his half-brother Louis Fitzgibbon became a noted Holocaust denier. 

The late Robert Wistrich was unsparing in his portrait of von Salomon as a typical "noble fascist" (as the German term has it): a violent extremist who had contributed to the death of German democracy and then claimed to have moral or practical qualms about the vulgar Nazis and their terror, yet profited from the regime and its backing, and after the war was unrepentant, drawing a false moral equivalence between Nazism and Allied occupation. The book, he said, "was a bitter, cynical personal testament, which exposed his utter indifference to questions of guilt and repentance."

The blurbs on the back cover, among my all-time favorites in this genre, are in the same spirit as Wistrich's sketch. (Hugh Trevor-Roper was the historian of Tudor-Stuart England who, while working as an intelligence officer in 1945, was tapped to write the account of The Last Days of Hitler [1947].)

I acquired this at Paul's Books, one of the great used bookstores in Madison, WI (I went to school with the kids and knew the late owner, as well as his widow, who maintained the store and always greeted me effusively whenever I returned in later years). I bought it because I was taking classes and doing research on Nazism. It turned out to command my interest for other reasons, as well.

It has to be one of the more unusual items in my library: because it is an "association copy," valued for the connection to the author or owner rather than for its intrinsic nature. In this case what makes the book unusual is not just the fact that it made its way from the northeast to the midwest, but the "Alice's Restaurant" connection. How it got to Paul's bookstore, I have no idea.

Alice's Restaurant

Many (particularly those who lived through or developed an affection for the era of the counterculture) will know this modern folk classic and the backstory. If not, the Massachustetts Cultural Council's "Mass Moments" explains:

[On November 28, 1965] 20-year-old Arlo Guthrie was convicted of littering in the Berkshire County town of Stockbridge, and the song "Alice's Restaurant Massacree" was born. The son of legendary musician Woody Guthrie, Arlo and a friend were spending Thanksgiving with Alice and Ray Brock at the couple's home in a former church. Alice asked the boys to take a load of trash to the town dump. When they arrived, they found that the dump was closed, so they threw the trash down a nearby hillside. Guthrie turned the story of their subsequent arrest and court appearance into a best-selling record.

The story of "Alice's Restaurant" begins and ends at a church in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. By the 1960s, the small, pine Gothic Revival building had lost its congregation. The Episcopal diocese put the building up for sale, and in 1964, Alice and Ray Brock purchased it. After a formal de-consecration ceremony, the young couple moved in.

The Brocks were a creative and charismatic pair who had been influenced by Jack Kerouac and other members of the Beat Generation. Ray was an architect and woodworker, Alice a painter and designer. Both worked at a private school in nearby Stockbridge. They transformed the former church into a quirky but welcoming place where their students and other young people could find refuge from "establishment pressures," especially the Vietnam War and the draft.

Ray and Alice served as surrogate parents for the young women and men who camped out, sometimes for weeks at a time, at the church. The neighbors were not happy about the arrangement. They viewed the Brocks and their guests as drug-using, long-haired hippies. Agitated residents honked their car horns and yelled as they drove past; they wrote letters to the editor protesting the presence in their community of what they called a "beatnik commune."

It was in this context that police officer Bill Obanhein reacted so strongly when the church group was implicated in the Thanksgiving trash dump. That evening, the Brocks received a call from Obanhein. He had spent "two very unpleasant hours" going through the debris until he found an envelope with the Brocks' name. Alice confirmed that Arlo and his friend were the culprits. Obanhein summoned the boys to the police station.

"Officer Obie" later admitted that he had no sympathy for longhaired, nonconformist teenagers, although he conceded that they were basically "good kids." He decided to give them a scare and make an example of them so that the town would have no more trouble with hippies. He arrested the pair and put them in a jail cell until a furious Alice Brock bailed them out. Two days later, they appeared before a blind judge and his Seeing Eye dog, who "viewed" Obanhein's photo evidence of the trash dumping and convicted the two young men of littering. He fined them $25 each and ordered them to clean up the trash.

After paying the fine and completing the cleanup, Arlo Guthrie began composing what would take up one entire side of his first album. Eventually 18 minutes long, "Alice's Restaurant Massacree" evolved slowly over the next two years. The first verses written recounted the events of Thanksgiving 1965. Later Arlo added lyrics critical of the Vietnam War. When Alice Brock opened a restaurant in Stockbridge in early 1969, the song found its refrain, "You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant." Then, finally, there was the draft. Called before his New York City draft board for a hearing on his fitness for military service, Arlo faced a final question: "Have you ever been arrested?" In the song, his conviction for littering saves Arlo Guthrie from the draft. In reality he was classified 1A, but his lottery number never came up.

I first learned of the incident when I was in middle school. We were having a sleepover at a friend's house, and when we got up the next morning, my friend's mother said, "Alice's Restaurant is on." Because her name was Alice, I at first thought she was just referring to her breakfast menu, but then she played the album in its final version with the Vietnam lyrics, and I made another step forward in my cultural literacy.


A Birthday in Massachusetts

Back to the book. The owner, whose rather conventional bookplate graces the inside cover, wrote a long inscription on the flyleaf, recounting bicycle travels in Massachusetts with friends, culminating in a birthday celebration at which several friends signed the volume.

The last two names are those of Ray and Alice Brock. Not a book I would ask my close friends to sign, and an odd circumstance for future hippies, perhaps, but such are the discreet charms of book history.



Resources

"51 things about Arlo Guthrie’s ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ on its 51st anniversary" (Boston Globe)

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.

Thanksgiving 2016: Link Dump and From the Vaults

I tend to post something about Thanksgiving every year, so, rather than writing up a long new piece, I'll just share some items in this week's news, along with links to older posts.



In the news:

• From the Library of Congress: Thanksgiving at the end of World War I, ranging from President Wilson's proclamation ("This year we have special and moving cause to be grateful and to rejoice. God has in His good pleasure given us peace.") to posters.

• From Tablet: Ed Simon, "Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims’ American Jewish Holiday: How the biblical narrative of Exodus helped shape the founders’ idea of a secular nation with liberty for all"

• From New England Historical Society: "New England’s First Thanksgiving – Maine Style:
New England’s first Thanksgiving celebrated by European colonists (the American Indians had harvest celebrations of their own long before) came in 1607 in Popham, Maine."

• From Business Insider: Jeremy Bender, "How Thanksgiving took the place of an awesome military celebration" [British evacuation of New York, 1783]

• From Smithsonian (2011): Lisa Bramen, "Thanksgiving in Literature: Holiday readings from Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, Philip Roth and contemporary novels that use Thanksgiving as the backdrop for family dysfunction"

• From Scientific American: Dana Hunter, "The Real Story of Plymouth Rock. Learn about the erratic past of one of America's most famous rocks" [history, mythology, geology]

• From Pilgrim Hall Museum: More Thanksgiving Recipes from America's Past (1671 through World War II) 

• And finally, since half of the seasonal articles about Thanksgiving present manifest untruths and distortions of history, while the other half take as their task the correction of these errors (in the process committing more of their own), former Chief Curator of Plimoth Plantation Jeremy Bangs offers, via History News Network (from 2005):

"The Truth About Thanksgiving Is that the Debunkers Are Wrong."

* * *

From the vaults:


• 2008 The Inevitable Thanksgiving Piece : focusing on food and fable as well as historiography: how the holiday came to assume its familiar form. Among my minor favorites are the mystery of the cranberry (pregnant insects?! wtf?) and Pilgrim drinking habits (a shot and a brew).

• 2009 Thanksgiving Day (Thanksgiving Again): brief piece with focus on historiography--contrasting historical approaches of the focus on material culture and the larger narrative (including the long-term consequences), exemplified by James and Patricia Deetz on the one hand and Nathaniel Philbrick, on the other (with links to a variety of topics, from the date of the holiday to presidential turkey pardons and the relation between poultry and dinosaurs).

• 2010 (a) The Annual Thanksgiving History Buffet: a smorgasbord of topics, starting with foodways (eels and sweet potato) and moving on to the conservative canards about Pilgrims, socialism, and capitalism.

• 2010 (b) Thanksgiving Miscellany: e.g. never rocked to the Turkey Gobbler's Ball? Here's your chance.

• 2010 (c) (I must have been on a roll that year): 13 December 1621: The "Fortune" Sails from Plymouth to England (and why the Pilgrims were neither "socialists" nor "capitalists")

• 2012: 22 December 1620: Pilgrims Land at Plymouth Rock (and post-Thanksgiving postprandial link dump)
• 2014 Post-Thanksgiving Digestif (cheers and fears): Emily Dickinson, historic beverages, the turkey industry, Black Friday and late capitalism


 

October 20, 1880: Death of Lydia Maria Child

Most Americans of all ages are familiar with Lydia Maria Child's work even if they have never heard her name. Her 1844 poem, “Over the River and Through the Wood," is the  anthem of Thanksgiving, popular long before that holiday was even officially established.

Less well known is her long and active career as feminist, abolitionist, and advocate of Native American rights. Still less well known is the fact that she lived here in the Pioneer Valley from 1838 to 1841.

Here is a fragment of one of her letters from my collection.

Of more interest to me than the signature (apart from proof of authorship) is the fragment of the actual letter on the other side of the paper, which tantalizingly alludes to the prospects of women authors in the mid-nineteenth-century literary-journalistic marketplace.

One longs to know who or what is at issue here. Child was well acquainted with the press and competition. She had to earn a living by her pen, but already in the 1830s, her increasingly outspoken abolitionism alienated some of her readers. The National Women's History Museum observes, her radicalism "created an uproar among family friends, who bankrupted Child’s magazine by cutting off their children’s subscriptions to Juvenile Miscellany . . . sales of her work in other areas suffered from the controversy over slavery."

Still, she had a following, and by the time of the Civil War, when this document was gifted to an admirer, opposition to slavery was national policy rather than political eccentricity. The common but barbarous practice of clipping pieces from famous writers' manuscripts and distributing them as souvenirs--or holy relics, like hairs from Peter the Hermit's donkey--drives historians and archivists to distraction, but is as good a proof as any of the new-found status of the author in the nineteenth century.

The Women's History Museum notes, laconically, "She joined her husband during the late 1830s in an agrarian enterprise doomed to fail; like Louisa May Alcott, whose writing supported her father’s family while he experimented with utopian agronomy, Lydia Child soon needed income. In 1841, she moved to New York and edited the weekly National Anti-Slavery Standard . . . ."

This is the story that Steve Strimer of the David Ruggles Center addressed in today's talk at the Amherst History Museum on utopianism in the nineteenth-century Northampton area. Child and her husband David joined abolitionist friends here in an attempt to cultivate sugar beets.

She didn't much enjoy her surroundings:

I never was in a place that I liked less that Northampton, nor have I ever in my life spent so unhappy a year as I spent there. Nature has been lavish of beauty, but the human soul is stagnant there. My strong love of freedom could ill endure the bigotry and intolerance that prevails. (June 9, 1839)

As for the Connecticut Valley, I dislike it more and more, every week I live. If I buy a pound of butter, it is sure to fall short an ounce … Calvinism sits here enthroned, with high ears, blue nose, thin lips, and griping fist. I would I had lived in an age when the gaunt spectre had done his mission. (to Ellis Gray Loring, February 9, 1841)

In the meantime, the Calvinism is long gone, and Child might finally feel at home in the Pioneer Valley.

15 October 1830: Helen Fiske (Helen Hunt Jackson) born in Amherst

On October 15, 1830, Helen Fiske was born in Amherst. The friend of Emily Dickinson, who was born two months later (the arrival of both children is entered on the same page in Dr. Isaac Cutler's "baby book," or record of deliveries) became an author in her own right. Unlike Dickinson, Helen Hunt (Helen Hunt Jackson after widowhood and remarriage) chose to make a career of her writing.

She also became devoted to the cause of Native American rights. Her best known works are
 A Century of Dishonor: A Sketch of the United States Government's Dealings with Some of the Indian Tribes (1881) and the novel, Ramona (1884), which she hoped would be a Native American pendant to Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Jackson is prominently depicted on the Amherst History Mural (2005) by David Fichter, in the 1730 West Cemetery. Although the wall on which the mural is painted will fall to the wrecking ball when the former motel building is replaced by a large new mixed-use development, the developers have contracted with the artist to repaint the mural in full scale on a more suitable surface as part of the new building.

• From the vaults: More background on Jackson, her home, and the Amherst Writers' Walk.
• Biographical sketch from "Mass Moments," a this-day-in-history service of the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities

Traditions of Christmas Past: from boisterous to banned to bourgeois

From the vaults, via last year's Tumblr post:

“‘At Home’ in the Nursery, or The Masters and Misses Twoshoes Christmas Party,” by George Cruikshank (1792-1878)

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Etching with hand coloring.
Image dimensions: c. 214 x 267 mm (approx.  8.4 x 10.5 inches)
Signed in the plate, “G Cruishank fect” (left) and “Pubd. Augt 1st 1835, by Thos McLean, 26, Haymarket.” (right)

This is the second issue. The print first appeared in the 1826 collection, Holiday Scenes, published by Samuel Knight (active 1805-41). Thomas McLean (1788-1875) reissued it 9 years later in Cruikshankiana, an assemblage of the most celebrated works of George Cruikshank. He largely effaced the original Knight signature, but it survives as a ghost imprint above his own, at lower right:

“London Pubd Jany 3d 1826 by S Knight, 3 Sweetings Alley [{Roy[a] X'Change’}]

{enlarge}

Not yet "Victorian” in the strict (or any other) sense, the etching nonetheless lacks the ribaldry or bite of Cruikshank’s other early (especially political) work: it manages to be satirical and sentimental at once. We can already recognize in it our received image of Christmas as domestic idyll, familiar from Dickens to “The Nutcracker” (though the evolution of the latter is a tale in itself).

The fourteen (count 'em!) children–this, at a time when the average British family size peaked at around 6 children (1, 2)–play with a mixture of sedate enjoyment and abandon as a stout serving-woman brings in a tray of treats. The image is rich in period detail, from the toys and the copy of the Eaton [sic] Latin Grammar abandoned on the floor, to the delicate jelly-glasses (whatever possessed the parents of that day to put them in the hands of youngsters?) and the faux-bamboo “fancy chairs” on which the children sit or climb.

The etching also also suggests why the Calvinists and their American descendants held no truck with Christmas. Theologically, it was a problem for them because its celebration was not biblically mandated, and the date of Jesus’ birth was in any case unknown. The holiday was moreover associated with revelry–whether heavy drinking by adults or just boisterous behavior, as shown in our print–that seemed incommensurate with the spirit of a holy festival.

Such was certainly the attitude here in Massachusetts, where Christmas celebrations were banned in 1659, as the legislature put it: “For preventing disorders … by reason of some still observing such ffestivalls as were superstitiously kept in other countrys, to the great dishonnor of God & offence of others.” The state lifted the ban in 1681, but it took more than a century and a half before things really began to change. Under the influence of shifting national tastes, Christmas began to assume its familiar lineaments of wholesome domesticity and consumption. (In Massachusetts, Irish immigration also contributed to the shift.) The 1855 Christmas celebration at the Worcester Free Church under minister and abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson was a symbolic turning point. The following year, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow observed, “We are in a transition state about Christmas here in New England. The old Puritan feeling prevents it from being a cheerful hearty holiday; though every year makes it more so,” and the legislature officially recognized the holiday.

Is Your Restaurant Breeding Bolsheviks?

When we visited Boston earlier this fall for a little family gathering, we stayed, for sentimental as well as practical reasons, at the classic Parker House (now, technically, Omni Parker House).

As I had my breakfast and glanced across the room at a couple of the friendly and accomplished restaurant staff, I could not help but wonder what brought them here and where they might end up in 20 or 30 years.


Home of . . .?

The Parker House, founded in 1855 and now celebrating its 160th anniversary, is famous for many things, from the foods that it introduced to the American table (Parker House rolls, Boston Creme Pie, Boston sc[h]rod) to its distinguished clientele: from the "Saturday Club" of Emerson, Longfellow, Holmes, Agassiz, Dana, et al., to occasional visitors such as Charles Dickens.

However, I could not help but think of the famous figures who worked there long before they attained world renown: namely, two of the most influential radicals of the twentieth century. Future Vietnamese communist leader Ho Chi Minh worked there as a baker from 1911 to 1913, and in the early 1940s, Roxbury resident Malcolm Little worked there as a busboy. It was only after going to prison in 1946 that he converted to Islam and became Malcolm X.


A kind of long but indeterminate period of time which will live in infamy?

Because it's December 7 today: Admittedly, the Omni Parker House website screws things up, saying, "Malcolm X was a busboy in the early 1940's during the Pearl Harbor invasion." Sorry: there was a Pearl Harbor attack on one Sunday morning, but the Japanese invasion--as I thought everyone knew--failed to materialize. There is after all a reason that we still use FDR's phrase, "a date which will live in infamy." Not a week or a couple of months or several years. A date.


"So Ho Chi Minh conceivably could've baked a Boston Cream Pie?"

Just before Thanksgiving, even CBS News alluded to the political connection:

"Malcolm X was a busboy," he said. "Ho Chi Minh worked in the bake shop."

"So Ho Chi Minh conceivably could've baked a Boston Cream Pie?"

"Yes, he could." And Malcolm X presumably could've cleaned up after somebody that had just eaten one.

Who's biding his or her time in the restaurant that you patronize, while dreaming of greater things? Treat them respectfully and tip generously. It's the right thing to do. And besides: who knows?

Town Meeting Follies. The New Hampshire View (1): "I Hate Town Meeting"

Given that we have launched into the great debate over the proper form of local government, I am hauling pertinent past posts (or parts of them) out of the vaults.

Several years ago, in the course of a Twitter conversation with a fellow historic preservationist about obscure or obsolete New England town offices (the one in question was that of "hog reeve"), I came across this humorous portrayal of a mildly undemocratic, corrupt, and dysfunctional town meeting. It was originally published in New Hampshire Magazine back in 2008, and the URL appears to be a victim of proverbial "link rot," so I am glad I grabbed a portion of the text at the time and can share it here again.

Lest anyone leap to any invidious conclusions: I am doing so simply to illustrate the range of character of and opinion about New England town meetings. As one of the labels for the post should suggest, we in Amherst are fortunate to have a Town Meeting that--whatever one thinks of the views expressed at any given time--is serious, ethical, and managed by skilled Moderators. We should be grateful for that, because: "it could always be worse."

Still, you may see a few traits that you recognize.

Enjoy.

I hate town meeting.

Town meeting is a laboratory sink for psychologists.

Every dreadful facet of human nature reveals itself at these gatherings. One must have the emotions of a sociopath to escape town meeting with one's soul intact.

I remember a town meeting in Temple years ago where the Police Chief, Russ Tyler, was attacked for using his cruiser too much. Poor Chief Tyler used his own car as the cruiser. He saved the town a lot of money using his own car.

But the mob at the meeting was sure he was getting away with something.

I remember thinking, "You people are crazy to be yelling at the Chief like this. He has a gun."

But Chief Tyler also had great heart. He was a straight shooter and a nice guy (although he did look like that sheriff in the old TV ad who says, "Boy, you're in a heap of trouble.")

In the end, the meeting vented itself and the Chief got his budget. But what heroic self-restraint that man showed.

Towns are made up of people who do not trust one another. It is and has always been "us and them."

The "new" people settle here with an idyllic view of living in a small town. They come from places where no one knows each other. Here they expected to find love.

What they find, of course, is resentment. The old Yankees don't trust the newcomers. Usually the newcomers are Democrats.

Some newcomer always stands up at the meeting and says something like, "My name is Ralph Lumpman and Loraine and I moved up here last fall from Darien. We bought the old Cosgrove place on Swamp Road. And I'd like to say that our moderator tonight is doing a bang-up job and I think we should give him a round of applause."

Then all the people, who recently moved to town, clap.

And there is always someone who informs the moderator that the flag is on the wrong side of the stage.

Town meeting gives people license. No one is expected to practice restraint.

Everyone is there to tell it like it is.

For 24 years of my life I was a small-town newspaper reporter and did news on the radio station in Peterborough.

I have attended over three hundred town meetings.

In my 50-plus years of going to town meetings I've seen a lot of changes. Years ago most towns were controlled by the families who owned the mills. In Milford it was Charlie Emerson; in Jaffrey it was D.D. Bean; in Wilton it was the Abbots; in Dublin, Robb Sagendorph.

If you didn't work for these men, someone in your family did. I used to watch D. D. Bean sit in the front of the hall at the Jaffrey Town Meeting.

Mr. Bean owned the match factory, in Jaffrey. When an article important to him came up he would turn and look back over his seat and note who voted "for" and who voted "against" the article.

Robb Sagendorph was the publisher of Yankee magazine and the Old Farmer's Almanac up in Dublin and he had double clout. Robb Sagendorph was also the moderator. If he didn't like an article he would close down discussion.

"We have had enough jawing about this matter," he'd say. "It's time to vote." 

August 2002: Julia Child's Kitchen Becomes Historical. And stray thoughts on the period room (not necessarily in that order)

Traditional "period rooms," once a staple feature of the museum of history or fine arts, fell into disrepute in recent years for a variety of reasons. As one curator puts it, they often incoherently (re)presented "decorative arts displays" or "local history" or "confusing combinations of both approaches." Still, there is certainly a value to preserving the individually significant interior as well as the exemplary collection for the study of material culture in general.

In its original incarnation as the spanking new but architecturally retrograde Museum of History and Technology (1964), the National Museum of American History (as it is now known) still featured old-fashioned period rooms (e.g. for showing off the dresses of First Ladies), considered at the time "a certain crowd-puller."


"history happens in parlors and kitchens as well as in the halls of Congress"

Still, this is not to say that everything was choked in conceptual cobwebs. My favorite example: in 1963, activists saved an 18th-century Ipswich, Massachusetts, house from demolition literally at the last moment by arranging to have the Smithsonian acquire it. So, instead of yet another Colonial period room, we have an entire home (the largest--some say: greatest--artifact in the collection) which tells the story of both structure and inhabitants from its origins to its abandonment. As the Smithsonian puts it, "The five families whose stories are told here were not famous, but they remind us that history happens in parlors and kitchens as well as in the halls of Congress." In the most recent interpretation (2002), portions of the walls have been opened up to reveal the timber-frame structure, thus doing justice to the original focus on the evolution of technology.

The Museum continues to think innovatively in its acquisition and interpretation practices regarding historic interiors and objects. To be sure, you can still find such things as a 17th-century chair-table (nothing wrong with that!)--but also Archie and Edith Bunker's chairs, from the TV series, "All in the Familly"--which a curator boldly calls "the equivalent of the "Appomattox chairs" used by Grant and Lee when the Confederacy surrendered.

Equally interesting are the larger interior ensembles. For me, one of the most memorable and moving is the famed Greensboro desegregation lunch counter. As of 2008, it is also part of a new series of "landmark objects" anchoring and highlighting the themes of a given wing.


One kitchen that made history

As the Smithsonian says of the Ipswich House, "history happens in parlors and kitchens as well as in the halls of Congress." And so, it seemed but fitting that at least a portion of another Massachusetts house should enter those galleries. It didn't make the cut as a "landmark object," it didn't date back to the 18th century, and it didn't play a role in the triumph of human rights, but it did change America in its own way, from foodways to women's history, and it has proven extremely popular. I am speaking of Julia Child's kitchen.

It opened at the Smithsonian on August 19, 2002, only shortly after the updated installation of the Choate House from Ipswich. When Julia Child (1912-2004) decided to relocate from Cambridge, Massachusetts to her native California at the end of her public career, she gave her kitchen to the Smithsonian.

"A Place for Everything"

"While kitchens of the 1950s and 1960s were often designed to keep everything hidden from view, Julia and Paul preferred to hang their pots and pans on a pegboard for quick and easy access. Nor would there be any confusion about where that pan belonged after it had been used, thanks to the outlines Paul traced on the pegboard. Later, for the benefit of student and guest cooks working in the kitchen with Julia, snapshots were added." (Smithsonian)

"Work zones"

"Julia organized her kitchen around work zones, making sure tools and equipment were placed near the surfaces where they would be used. Her pots, pans, and utensils are near the stove, her knives are near the sink, and her small appliances are set on solid work surfaces, ready to use." (Smithsonian)

As Mass Moments puts it:

Designed by her husband Paul in 1961, the room was specially tailored to his wife's particular needs, with high countertops to accommodate her six-foot two-inch frame. In her ten cookbooks and eight television programs, several of which were filmed in her own kitchen, Julia Child demystified French cooking for American audiences. She became, in the words of the New York Times, "the French chef for a Jello nation." The exhibit is titled "Bon Appétit!" — as she signed off at the end of every show she hosted during her 38 years as a television icon.

Viewers of the film, "Julie and Julia" (the former was a whining Amherst College graduate: nuff said) will be familiar with the backstory behind the first great cookbook, but just in case, Mass Moments explains:

She fell in love with French food and enrolled in the prestigious Cordon Bleu culinary school. In 1952 she and two Frenchwomen formed a cooking school and began writing a French cookbook for American readers.

In 1956 the Childs returned to the U.S. and settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Julia Child continued work on the book, communicating frequently with her French partners. When Mastering the Art of French Cooking was published in 1961, with 734 pages of detailed but unintimidating recipes, it was a critical and popular success. In an era when American "cuisine" consisted of cake mixes, TV dinners, and health food crazes, the book made sophisticated French food not only appealing but accessible. Child ignored fads, and Americans embraced her "cuisine soignée: long, caring cooking."

My mother was a good cook, but by no means a gourmet. Still, Julia Child's first great book was one of the main cookbooks in our kitchen. I believe it was a present from my father.

When I learned to cook (mostly while I was a grad student: it seemed preferable to bankruptcy or starvation), I bought myself a copy, too. (Later, my mother gave me more recent Julia Child books as presents.)

The original installation, pictured above, closed in early 2012 and, to mark the centennial of Child's birth, was reinterpreted later that year as the focus of a new exhibition, "FOOD: Transforming the American Table 1950-2000."

It seems fitting: just as the Choate house chronicled the lives and material culture of ordinary people "who were not famous," so, too, her kitchen helps to chronicle the transformation of the way that all of us eat and think about food.  There is more than one way for history to happen in the kitchen.

Bon appétit.



Footnote:

Local connection: The pioneering chef was a graduate of Smith College (history major, I am proud to say), which celebrates a Julia Child Day. In fact, I recall meals at the former Faculty Club where we were served a special "Julia Child" label house wine.

Resources

• Bon Appétit! Julia Child's Kitchen at the Smithsonian
• 10 Crucial Facts About the Julia Child's Kitchen Exhibit, Reopening Tomorrow, Washington Eater staff, 14 August 2012 (includes video of the conservation and reinstallation process)

[updated 26 August; full piece did not post the first time]