New Clues as to Amelia Earhart's Fate?

Discovery News reports:

Tantalizing new clues are surfacing in the Amelia Earhart mystery, according to researchers scouring a remote South Pacific island believed to be the final resting place of the legendary aviatrix.

Three pieces of a pocket knife and fragments of what might be a broken cosmetic glass jar are adding new evidence that Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan landed and eventually died as castaways on Nikumaroro, an uninhabited tropical island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati. The island was some 300 miles southeast of their target destination, Howland Island.

"These objects have the potential to yield DNA, specifically what is known as 'touch DNA','" Ric Gillespie, executive director of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), told Discovery News in an email interview from Nikumaroro. (read the rest)

The article, noting the 1940 discovery of skeletal remains (since lost) "attributed to a white female of northern European extraction, about 5 feet 7 inches tall," goes on to detail circumstantial evidence of a castaway campsite, based on the artifacts.

The suggestion of hard evidence from "touch DNA" sounds intriguing but strikes me, at first thought, as a bit of a stretch.  Although the relatively new technique is able to identify samples from only a handful of cells (rather than, as earlier more extensive amounts of tissue, bodily fluid, or other human material), I would tend to suspect that any samples here—given that we seem to be dealing with exposed objects (the plane, if present, is assumed to be deep under water) would be badly degraded.  The report notes, for example, how quickly bones aged and broke down in the island environment.  Still, it is possible, I suppose, that genetic material might have adhered to a protected interior surface of one of the objects such as the knife and somehow survived.

The disappearance of the "aviatrix" (a whole etymological and social history in that antiquated word) has fascinated the public for over seven decades, and, like other mysteries, led to much speculation, much of that wild.  At the one end of the spectrum are suggestions that she was on a secret spy mission for the US government.  At the other:  the demythologizing explanation of poor piloting and navigational skills, or at least preparations wholly inadequate for a trip of such magnitude. Both allow for the possibility of a forced landing in an area made more dangerous by the proximity of Japanese forces as tensions in the Pacific mounted.  Sometimes the most mundane truth proves to be the most tragic.

June 7 1862: Political Invective in Amherst in the Old Days vs. Today

Radical students invite controversial speaker to Amherst. Surprise. Controversy ensues: another surprise.

As we've noted here (and many already knew), Amherst has in recent decades acquired a reputation as a contentious, cantankerous place, which spawns or even thrives on controversy (some justified, some not). In recent years, in particular, there have been growing expressions of concern about the tone of political debate, for example in the blogosphere.  Sometimes the controversy has revolved around outside speakers being allowed (or forbidden) to speak. 

This example, from nearly 160 years ago, shows that these concerns about civility are nothing new.  Amherst residents will be familiar with the work of Daniel Lombardo, former curator of Special Collections at the Jones Library, for his compilations of oddments and anecdotes from our history.  Others should get to know it.

On June 7, 1862, as the Civil War raged, the "Fighting Parson" and passionate anti-slavery activist William G. Brownlow came to town.  Here is an excerpt from Lombardo's account:

  Rev. Brownlow was invited to speak by the students of Amherst College, who sympathized with the persecuted Unionists of Eastern Tennessee, of whom Brownlow was a leader. Their invitation to him emphasized the "noble stand which you, though menaced and exiled by traitors, have maintained against the Rebellion."

He called the rebellion "the most wicked vile and devilish the world ever saw . . . instituted by men who are low and vile . . . the dregs of the streets and gutters."

  In a speech that was enthusiastically received with bursts of applause, Brownlow turned his wrath to certain Southern leaders.  He called Senator Mason of Virginia "a miserable, corrupt, whiskey-rotted, brandy-bloated, beef-headed scavenger . . . a miserable lying, pompous dog."  In a rather shocking opinion for a man of the cloth, Rev. Brownlow proclaimed that Mason "ought to have had a grind-stone tied about his neck, and sunk in the waters of Boston Harbor, as Adams and his comrades served the British Tea."

Mason left for Europe with John Slidell, whom Brownlow described as "a hideous Orang Outang."  For all senators who joined the rebel congress, Brownlow recommended that their "lying tongues ought to be plucked out of their mouths, and fed to mean dogs, and their bodies suspended by grass ropes to trees."

  It is evidence of the extremes of human emotions, and the breakdown of morality during war, that Amherst so warmly responded to a man who shouted, in a foreshadowing of Naziism, "I am an advocate of exterminating and wiping off from the face of the earth the whole infernal race of traitors and peopling the country with a better race of men if the rebellion continues."

  William Brownlow went on to become the governor of Tennessee in 1865, and a U.S. Senator in 1869.

—Daniel Lombardo, A Hedge Away:  The Other Side of Emily Dickinson's Amherst (Northampton:  Daily Hampshire Gazette, 1997), 25-26 

Strong stuff. Admittedly, likening it to Nazism is just stupid and sloppy, but one gets Lombardo's point.  Moral outrage is a double-edged sword, and when passion flares, we don't always wield it as wisely as we should.  Anyway, it's good to keep this account in mind whenever we worry about the current state of political debate here, just for a sense of perspective.

7 June 1892: Edith Wharton Begins to Build "The Mount"

From Mass Moments:

...in 1902, the writer Edith Wharton wrote to a friend about a visit to the site of her new home, The Mount, under construction in Lenox: "Lenox has had its usual tonic effect on me, & I feel like a new edition, revised and corrected." Once considered desolate wilderness, the beautiful Berkshire Hills and the quaint village of Lenox drew writers, artists, and intellectuals throughout the nineteenth century. By 1900 Lenox had become the summer place of choice for many of New York's wealthiest families. Like Wharton, they built magnificent houses — which they called "cottages" — with extensive grounds. When the Gilded Age ended, so did the "Berkshire Cottage" era. A few estates survive. Edith Wharton's The Mount is one of them. (read the rest)

It's a wonderful place in the sense of house and landscape. It's also been a great venue for cultural events (we've enjoyed seeing Shakespeare performed there).

And now, as the saying goes, the rest of the story.

What Mass Moments did not mention was that, by 2008, The Mount—by now, a historic site dedicated to the legacy of Edith Wharton—was facing foreclosure and begging for emergency public donations.  Speaking in favor of saving The Wharton Restoration (that's the official name), the Boston Globe—cleverly, it no doubt thought (admittedly, the Globe thinks everything it does is clever)—entitled its editorial, "Edith Wharton's House of Worth." However, there is another, more critical or ironic way to read that punning tag, for this is really a story of overvaluation: inflated sense of worth and impunity.  To be fair, the Globe also avuncularly declares that board members "must ask themselves tough questions about whether the organization overextended itself," and correctly concludes, "The evidence suggests that it did."  This is what we refer to as genteel understatement. The Wharton Restoration ran into trouble because of a series of shockingly ill-considered decisions, first and foremost, reckless reliance on debt in the absence of a sustainable strategic plan.

One final and near-fatal blow was the entirely understandable but dubiously justifiable decision to purchase Wharton's library from a British bookdealer. In the first place, although the importance for Wharton scholarship is obvious, the connection to the site is more tenuous. Wharton lived there for less than a decade, so the library actually comes in large part from her European expat digs. In the second place, as my book-history and book-trade colleagues agree, the collection was vastly overvalued at a price of 2.6 million dollars for 2,600 volumes (you do the math; even few "association copies" belonging to famous authors have that kind of intrinsic average value). Better management would have gotten a better deal or called the dealer's bluff. What is even more shocking—indeed, stupefyingly stupid—was the decision to purchase the books on the vague assumption that individual donors would later step forward and finance the deal by "adopting" individual books. Finally, one can question whether the books belonged at a site that was not yet properly equipped to house them and manage their use.  The Wharton papers are at Yale, and a large institution with deep pockets and proper facilities and staffing might have been a far more appropriate purchaser.  It's always tempting to try to acquire collections that are generally germane to the focus of a historic site, but one needs to ask the tough questions about core mission, support and sustainability.

The current Executive Director (and Vice President of Operations at the time of the débâcle) tells the story of the crisis in the most sanitized fashion and paints its prospects in the rosiest light.  (the editor of the interview calls these remarks "open and precise." LOL) We know all too well what happened. As for the future ("pragmatic about facing ongoing challenges"), we shall see.

Everyone who cares about culture, book history, and historic preservation should be glad that The Mount has been saved. But we should all hope and pray that the new management will be wiser.  Recent years have seen a trend (and need) for better planning and assessment at historic sites. The recent financial crisis and changing cultural market make that planning and accountability all the more important.

Lesson:  True, if you build it, they will come, but you then need to preserve it, endow it, and manage it efficiently!

6 June 1944: D-Day

One wonders what has become of the D-Day anniversary. Formerly marked by numerous events, it seems to be fading from consciousness as the date recedes and surviving veterans disappear.  (Not even many war movies or documentaries on tv here anymore.)

I doubt whether our students could even identify the date; I think many might know the date of Pearl Harbor, but not the year.  (NB: if they hadn't taken a class with me, of course.)  Here, for their benefit—or that of anyone else who wants to learn or needs a refresher course— is the overview for students from the National World War II Museum, which lists key players, goals, and scenes of combat, details the course of the fighting at key locations, and provides eyewitness testimony. And for everyone, a sample of the latter:

"... the craft gave a sudden lurch as it hit an obstacle and in an instant an explosion erupted.... Before I knew it I was in the water.... Only six out of 30 in my craft escaped unharmed. Looking around, all I could see was a scene of havoc and destruction. Abandoned vehicles and tanks, equipment strung all over the beach, medics attending the wounded, chaplains seeking the dead."

--Pvt. Albert Mominee, 16th Infantry Regiment, U.S. 1st Division

"When you talk about combat leadership under fire on the beach at Normandy, I don't see how the credit can go to anyone other than the company-grade officers and senior NCOs who led the way. It is good to be reminded that there are such men, that there always have been, and always will be. We sometimes forget, I think, that you can manufacture weapons, and you can purchase ammunition, but you can't buy valor and you can't pull heroes off an assembly line."

--Sgt. John Ellery, 16th Infantry Regiment, U.S. 1st Division

"It looked like a Hollywood scene in a way, but it wasn't. People were being killed all around us."

--Pfc. Walter Rosenblum

"He suddenly raised his body and let out an awful yell. He had realized that his right leg was missing. I pushed him back down and I remember him saying, 'What am I gonna do? My leg, I'm a farmer.'"

--Pharmacist's Mate Frank Feduik, administering morphine to a GI on the deck of an LST

And finally, one view from the top and one from outside:

"This operation is not being planned with any alternatives. This operation is planned as a victory, and that's the way it's going to be. We're going down there, and we're throwing everything we have into it, and we're going to make it a success."

--General Dwight D. Eisenhower

"'This is D-Day,' the BBC announced at 12 o'clock. 'This is the day.' The invasion has begun!... Is this really the beginning of the long-awaited liberation? The liberation we've all talked so much about, which still seems too good, too much of a fairy tale ever to come true?... the best part of the invasion is that I have the feeling that friends are on the way. Those terrible Germans have oppressed and threatened us for so long that the thought of friends and salvation means everything to us!"

-- Anne Frank, diary entry, June 6, 1944

They don't talk like that anymore. (Of course, we don't have wars like that anymore, either.)

Here in the Northeast, the Boston Globe ran a nice editorial, along with dozens of historic photos. The New York Times apparently couldn't be bothered.  Meanwhile, many conservatives took up the charge that President Obama ignored the holiday by failing to post anything on the White House website and attending a gala at Ford's Theatre, where, conveniently for the editorialists ("And, he said this on the anniversary of D-Day?"), honoree Desmond Tutu turned a fabled communist saying on its head by declaring, "Security is not something that comes from the barrel of a gun." (Wait, does this mean that conservatives and Chairman Mao agree? Actually, that's not as strange as it sounds: only a peculiar breed of liberal or pseudo-leftist is unable to comprehend the realities of politics and force.) Whether presidents should mark the D-Day anniversary is an interesting question (I'd prefer they would). But to what extent they have done so and whether there are partisan patterns, I can't say (haven't had the time to check; perhaps someone else would undertake this task). What I can say is that the critics quickly forgot President Obama's participation in the 65th anniversary events—in France—last year. (On that occasion, the Times also ran a piece and photo essay on the 320th Antiaircraft Barrage Balloon Battalion, "the only all-black unit in the D-Day landings on Omaha and Utah.")  On the left, a heartfelt post on the Daily Kos paid tribute to the event and the men, and generated appreciative comments. It would be nice to think that we could all at least come together in appreciating what General Eisenhower called the "Great Crusade" (unfortunate choice of words) to "bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world."

4 June 1942: Death of Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich; reflections on the new monument at the assassination site

On 27 May 1942 (last year’s post), Czechoslovak parachutists ambushed and mortally wounded SS Obergruppenführer (Major General) Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi ruler of the “Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.” The attack, and his death on 4 June, provoked a wave of vicious retaliation and generated controversy that has scarcely abated concerning the calculus of political violence and the price in reprisals occasioned by resistance to tyranny.

Killing the head of the Reich Main Security Service—the principal architect of Nazi terror, including the rapidly evolving persecution of the Jews—and a brutal ruler of an occupied homeland was by any measure an understandable goal for Czechoslovak military intelligence, but there were also more complex motivations on the part of the political echelon: Czechoslovakia, betrayed by its nominal British and French allies, had been forced to cede its western borderlands (including crucial fortifications) to Germany at the Munich Conference in September 1938 (Hungary and Poland also took their share, it is often forgotten). Thereafter, resistance became psychologically as well as practically almost impossible, and the Germans seized the remainder of the country in March 1939 without a fight, dividing it into the “Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia” and a clerico-fascist Slovak puppet state. War broke out in September, of course, making a mockery of the “appeasement” policy that had sacrificed the only functioning democracy in Central Europe in the vain hope of avoiding the inevitable showdown with fascism.

The Czechoslovak government-in-exile hoped that the assassination would accomplish multiple goals: to demonstrate resistance and national will in the face of Heydrich’s increasingly and embarrassingly successful attempts to pacify the country; to damage the German war effort; to rally the people to further resistance (in that it failed), and to ensure that, despite the dismemberment at Munich, the republic would be fully restored after an Allied victory. The assassination of Heydrich was not only an act of resistance and revenge, but also a bid to restore national honor during the conflagration and a marker laid down for the postwar bargaining table.

At the end of December 1941, Czechoslovak military intelligence in London, working with British Special Operations Executive (SOE), dropped three teams of parachutists into Bohemia (Silver A and B, and Anthropoid) followed by two more (Out Distance and Zinc) in March. After no little hardship (beginning with missed drop zones), the teams reassembled and eventually carried out their operation. The members of Anthropoid carefully planned the assassination to take advantage of Heydrich’s casual approach to security: He recklessly traveled from his country villa in Panenské Břežany to the castle in Prague in an open car, by a regular route, and without accompanying guards in a separate vehicle. Where his route took a sharp right-hand turn toward the River Vltava, the paratroopers took up their positions on the morning of May 27.

Sergeant Josef Valčik stood, apparently loitering, on a street corner. When the car approached, he signaled with a pocket mirror to Warant Officers Jan Kubiš and Josef Gabčík, farther down the street. As the car slowed to round the corner, Gabčík stepped forward, drew a Sten gun from under his raincoat, and fired—or tried to: the gun jammed. As he stood there, paralyzed, and Heydrich drew a pistol, Kubiš threw a modified anti-tank grenade, which exploded against the rear left side of the car. Kubiš escaped quickly, while Gabčík had to endure first gunfire from Heydrich and then pursuit by his chauffeur. The paratroopers instantly became the subject of an unprecedented manhunt.

the type of bomb used in the attack, adapted 

from a British anti-tank grenade

the car after the attack

Although Heydrich’s wounds at first appeared non-critical (for the kidneys and spine were untouched), the bomb had in fact driven fragments of horsehair and springs from the car’s seat into the pleura, diaphragm, and region of the spleen. After suffering for days in agony, the Reichsprotektor (treated only by German doctors) succumbed to complications from his wounds—usually described as septicaemia—on 4 June.

The story of the assassination long remained shrouded in both ignorance and distortion. Two wartime movies—Fritz Lang’s classic “Hangmen Also Die,” and Douglas Sirk’s less well-known “Hitler’s Madman” (both 1943)—paid ample tribute to the heroism of the resisters and suffering of the innocent victims of reprisals but bore no resemblance to the actual historical events. In part because of the horrible reprisals, the government-in-exile may have been reluctant to claim explicit and detailed credit for the action. President Edvard Beneš—who had capitulated at Munich, went into exile in England, and then returned briefly to his country after the war, only to be manipulated out of power by the communists—never openly acknowledged his role in the plan. At the time, his public statements attributed the act to homegrown patriots; he omitted any mention of it in his later memoirs. Only in the 1960s did the former head of Czechoslovak military intelligence, František Moravec, publicly confirm that he had carried out the operation with the full awareness and approval of the President. Although Czechoslovak communist leader Klement Gottwald had immediately praised the act from his exile in Moscow, the postwar communist government (it is often said) had little desire to call attention to the fact that the greatest act of wartime resistance had been accomplished by the western exile Czechs with assistance from imperial Britain. In 2007, Czech citizens, impatient at the absence of any commemoration on the spot, announced plans to put up their own, unauthorized memorial.  Only last spring, while I was in Prague, was a monument finally erected, 67 years after the event. (coverage from Radio Praha, with audio).

 new historical marker

Soon after Heydrich’s death, the Nazis installed a shrine at the scene of the attack, where a round-the-clock SS honor guard stood vigilant beside a bust of the Reichsprotektor. Unsurprisingly, the Czechs destroyed the offending structure in 1945. In subsequent decades, the assassination site was largely forgotten.

When I made my pilgrimage to a location only rarely mentioned in guidebooks, I decided to see as much as possible on foot.  After emerging from the Kobylisy metro station, I walked down Zenklova, though diverging along the way to explore the side streets now named after the parachutists.

 yellow arrows:  streets named after the parachutists who took part in the attack;

red arrow: assassination site

sign in street named after Jan Kubiš

sign in street named after Josef Gabčík

As in so many cases, the site of a great historical event is today a stark and unprepossessing place, transformed almost beyond recognition by modern development. Although one can still ride the line of the tram that nearly disrupted the ambush, what was once a quasi-rural intersection has become a modern roadway interchange reconfigured for high-speed, high-volume traffic. The site therefore poses multiple aesthetic and practical challenges for preservationist and artist alike.

interpretive sign:  the topography then and now

the yellow lines denote the former layout of roads and structures; the red arrow, the assassination site

When I rounded the corner of V Holešovičkách, I was at first, if not exactly disappointed, at least more puzzled and less moved than I had expected. I spent quite some time there—listening to Bohuslav Martinů's "Památník Lidicím" and "Polní Mše" on the iPod or just sitting in silence—contemplating both the historical event and the decisions made in commemorating it.

 then

now

The monument (Pomník Operaci Anthropoid), a triangular 11-meter column surmounted by a trio of bronze human figures, sits on a narrow, irregularly shaped plaza of concrete pavers and sand, wedged in between a clumsy concrete pedestrian underpass and unruly vegetation on one side, and the sharp edge of the roadway, on the other.

One could moreover almost imagine two very different monuments—the abstract and the representational—uneasily coexisting, as if a strange head had been grafted onto an altogether different body. To put it another way: It’s almost as if someone had tried to combine in one work, on a vertical plane rather than the horizontal, Maya Lin’s celebrated abstract Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1, 2) and Frederick Hart’s ultrarealistic "Three Servicemen" (also known as: "Three Soldiers") which stands nearby.

Upon reflection, though, I found the solution to the challenge of both message and topography more satisfying. Given the constraints of the site, the monument at times seems to compete for air space with the host of utilitarian highway light poles, while, at ground level, the viewscape is cluttered with traffic signs and a bus stop with advertising displays.

Both the volume and the color of the column allow it to assert itself, particularly when the warm afternoon light brings it into rich contrast with a deep blue sky.

And above all (no pun intended), the height is the crucial factor. In a crowded urban environment characterized mainly by high-speed automobile circulation and public transportation rather than calm pedestrian traffic, a lower monument would have been lost, and there’s no room for a piece with a large footprint anyway. The well-proportioned column holds its own: it’s easily visible from some distance, even to someone traveling in a vehicle, but does not dominate the scene. And directing the eye upwards allows it to communicate its message, as well.

That brings us (literally and figuratively), to the three sculptures. The realistic figures at first seem not just incongruous in the context of the column, but an odd choice in and of themselves: two men in the less than flattering British military uniforms of the day, and another in civilian dress (complete with even more incongruous fedora), stand poised at the points of the triangle, leaning forward, arms outstretched. The pose subtly suggests paratroopers about to jump. Yet it also suggested to me a heroic literal and figurative leap of faith.

General Moravec was brutally frank with the men that he handpicked for the mission, and recalled:

They knew that in all probability they would die with Heydrich and if there was any glory for them afterward they would not live to enjoy it. They accepted this knowledge with heroic calm and determination.  They made me think of that Roman fortitude about which I had read in the Latin classics.

[ Master of Spies: The Memoirs of General Frantisek Moravec (Garden City:  Doubleday & Co., 1975), 202 ]

The figures are realistic in an unrealistic setting. (Do men ever stand at the top of a triangular shaft? No.  But at least since the days of the stylites, we don't perch atop pillars, either.  And yet the sensibility and pose are different, for example, from the—in another sense equally "unrealistic"—Vendôme or Nelson columns.)  These figures are realistic in a just slightly stylized manner, and heroic in an understated, quotidian one. Unlike Hart’s (skillfully rendered but utterly banal) Vietnam soldiers, they bear no weapons, and neither their clothes nor their bodies show any of the physical or psychological scars of combat. Perhaps this also has to do with the difference between wars and causes: Vietnam was the bad war in which good men fought and struggled with themselves and their compatriots at home as well as the enemy. World War II remains “the good war.” Nonetheless, we are here far removed from the grandiose heroism of traditional, monumental representationalism in the spirit of, “dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,” whether the Marine Corps or Warsaw Ghetto memorials.

The figures portrayed here, in uniform or otherwise, are in a sense all profoundly civilian, ordinary men: They are human and humane, a sort of everyman, very much like the Slovak locksmith Gabčík and the Czech brickyard worker Kubiš. We see them at the moment of anticipation and commitment, before the horrors of combat. The outstretched arms are as much an embrace of both nation and universal humanity as they are limbs flexed for the jump from the plane. In other words, we see idealists, humble patriots. And contemplating this idealism and innocence only more powerfully brings home the magnitude of their achievement and the tragic end that they met.

5 June 1967: Outbreak of the "Six Day War" in the Middle East

On this day, the Six Day War (as it is known in the west) broke out when Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched air attacks against Egypt in response to a series of mounting military provocations. It was a doctrine that Israel's socialist politician and military leader Yigal Allon called the pre-emptive counterattack:  When the enemy's hostile intentions are clear, the smaller power, lacking large forces and strategic depth, needs to maximize its qualitative edge and the element of surprise, strike first, and carry the war onto enemy territory. Tensions had been rising with Syria (allied with Egypt in a military pact since 1966) over shelling of Israel's northern agricultural settlements and disputes over the demilitarized zone.  Egypt's movement of troops into the Sinai (following the expulsion of UN observers stationed there in the wake of the 1956 war) was a further provocation, and its closing of the Straits of Tiran—an international waterway—to Israei shipping constituted a clear act of war.

Although both politicians and scholars now agree that Israel struck first, the thesis that it did so as part of an aggressive and premeditated plan of expansion is, as historian (and current Israel ambassador to the US) Michael Oren has shown, a chimera.  All the evidence suggests that the war was the result of a miscalculation on the part of Egypt and Syria, goaded on by their Soviet patrons who wanted to stoke the tensions for geopolitical reasons of their own but not precipitate full-scale armed conflict (intercourse without orgasm, as one analyst of the period trenchantly put it).  And, far from being the masters of some comprehensive plan of aggression, the Israel leadership was shaken at the prospect of what many considered a new existential threat.

The result is well-known: Israel captured the Gaza Strip and Sinai peninsula from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the territory between the 1949 armistice lines and the Jordan River (so-called "West Bank") from Jordan. Ironically, of course, Jordan attacked even though Israel had urged it to stay out of the war, and thus, today's most contentious issues—the issues of "borders," "settlements," and "refugees," and the "question of Jerusalem"—all in a sense arose from this fateful decision. It is tempting to speculate as to what would have happened absent this colossal blunder on the part of the diminutive Hashemite monarch:  would the result have been a relatively simple negotiation over territory, leading to peace, or rather, would the conflict have festered even longer? One likewise wonders what would have happened, had the Arab states, when presented with an Israeli offer of peace, had not responded with the "three no's" of Khartoum. Or, for that matter, what would have happened had the Israel government heeded the advice of some of its own intelligence and security staff and established a Palestinian state on its own without waiting for the Arab states to negotiate. For better or worse, historians generally confine themselves to what was and why, rather than what might have been.  It is among the great ironies that what did happen was that the great Israeli victory and subsequent occupation of the captured territories (lasting longer than many of the parties perhaps dreamed) was perhaps the greatest impetus to a new Palestinian nationalism and a seemingly interminable rather than definitively resolved conflict.

The fighting in June 1967 was in many ways the last "classic" modern war:  a swift war of movement, fought by regular forces of recognized states, with traditional weapons.  Although air-to-air missiles played their role, planes still relied on cannon in close combat. Some of the tanks (e.g, the British Centurion and Soviet T-34) dated from World War II.  The popular music of the conflict, no less than much of the political rhetoric, was of a type that would not return. It was the end of an era in the sense of both an older, more straightforward form of war, and more generally, a kind of moral, military, and political innocence.

31 May: Memorial Day in Amherst. Honoring those who served; reversing the vandalism of veterans' graves

"War feels to me an oblique place"

     —Emily Dickinson

Although I've lived in Amherst for a good many years now and have witnessed many of our local festivities, this was the first time that I took part in the annual Memorial Day parade.  Ours is a small affair. I remember these events as being much grander when I was a child, though whether that was because it was a different era or because I lived in a much larger town, or both, is hard to say (the eternal problem of historical evidence and analysis). Certainly, some of our neighboring small towns have much larger celebrations. The difference may also have to do with the general Amherst distaste for things military and "patriotic" (though it was not always that way).

Still, like other New England towns, we decorate the graves of veterans with flags on the eve of the holiday—thus originally known as "Decoration Day" (it began to be called Memorial Day only from 1882 on), a practice commemorated in the second movement of Charles Ives's "A Symphony:  New England Holidays").



We also hold a small procession (we call it a "parade," but that almost feels like an exaggeration) from the Town Common to War Memorial Pool (ironically, closed for the second year due to budget constraints).


I marched (or walked at a dignified pace), along with my four of my five fellow Select Board members (one was out of town at another holiday program), as official representatives of the Town, behind the lead veterans and flag-bearer, and we returned the waves of the scattered observers (interestingly:  mostly either middle-aged people, or young couples with children).

preparing the flags

As we turned south from Pleasant Street onto Triangle Street and approached the site of the memorial ceremony, two F-15 fighter jets roared over our heads in salute (I can imagine how well that will go over with some people here), at once a striking contrast to the smallness of our enterprise and an affirmation of its importance.

The traditional ceremony took place beneath the flagstaff: placement of floral tributes on behalf of Town, veterans, and scouts, a few brief remarks by a representative of Veterans Services, reading of the names of the deceased, gunfire salute, playing of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and the national anthem.

Of particular interest to me was the news that veterans' service markers had been restored in time for the holiday.  It's traditional here to denote the graves of veterans with metal emblems that are both markers (indicating the war or nature of service) and flagholders, for occasions such as this. 

This past winter, a number of western Massachusetts towns suffered from a revolting wave of vandalism by thieves who stole some 200 of the markers, hoping to sell the valuable bronze. It's not the first such occasion in the Northeast, and at a time when thieves will steal copper from not only ornaments, but even the wires and pipes at construction sites, it's another sign of desperation as well as greed.The only cemeteries of ours targeted here were the 1818 North Cemetery and St. Brigid's cemetery in neighboring Hadley (though belonging to our local Catholic church). 

Now, if there are two groups you don't want to piss off, it's veterans and police, so these thieves, evidently a few bullets short of a full clip, were easily caught a few weeks later when an informant ratted them out.  They had sold the markers, readily identifiable as such, to area metal recyclers whom the authorities had alerted and soon questioned.  When, in a similar incident in New York several years ago, the thieves faced only petty larceny, outraged veterans and other citizens demanded that the penalty be raised to a felony.  Our local vandals have been "charged with felony larceny and larceny from a grave."  

The good news was that the bronzes were recovered. The bad news was that, although all were still recognizable as markers, some had been broken, and repair was prohibitively expensive.  We are still pondering how best to treat these artifacts. In the meantime, though, they have been replaced with new markers of bronze-washed aluminum, which is more durable and attractive than plastic but  much cheaper than bronze and therefore less valuable and attractive to any potential future thieves.  Normally, Veterans' Services purchases the markers as needed, but because of the unprecedented number and the expense of replacing the missing markers all at once, additional resources were required to set things right in time for the holiday. Soon after the thefts came to light, Ronald Lashway, owner of Douglas Funeral Home in Amherst, and a relative of veterans whose graves at St. Brigids's were desecrated, established a fund with People's Bank to reward anyone coming forth with information and/or pay for replacement markers.

On the way back to the center of town, I walked through historic 1730 West Cemetery, to see the flags and old markers.  (It was also one of my periodic visits to see how our landscape restoration was progressing; more on that in another post soon.)

grave of a Revolutionary War veteran

Because my route to and from home every day takes me past North Cemetery, I stopped there, as well, to view the decorated graves, and in particular, the replacement markers.

It is of course a mixed blessing that Memorial Day has come to mark the social if not astronomical start of the summer vacation season. It highlights the date while at the same time diminishing its historical and cultural rationale.  In her remarks at the ceremony, Veterans' Services representative Kathleen Pollard urged us to "put the memorial back in Memorial Day," and to observe a moment of rest and silence at 3:00 p.m.

I duly paused from my afternoon labors in the garden, but it was the midday walk through the cemeteries that most powerfully brought home the meaning of the occasion for me.  I've always been struck by the fact that American Memorial Day, a time when we remember life cut short, occurs in spring, the season of rebirth in nature (in many western countries, of course, the association with the christological imagery of days of national mourning or military commemoration was quite deliberate).

In any case, the contrast spurs contemplation as we living mark the sacrifice of the fallen, and also our universal mortality:

The possibility to pass
Without a Moment’s Bell—
Into Conjecture’s presence--
Is like a face of steel

Emily Dickinson

30 May 1971: Vietnam Veterans Against the War Occupy Lexington Green

As discontent over the Vietnam War rose, a "rabble" of militarily trained radicals was once again forced to disperse from Lexington Common.  As the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities recounts it in today's "Mass Moment":

On this day in 1971, over 450 anti-war protesters occupied the historic Lexington Green and refused to leave. The Vietnam Veterans Against the War had organized a three-day march from Concord to Boston — Paul Revere's route in reverse. According to Lexington's by-laws, no one was allowed on the Green after 10 PM, so the selectmen denied the protesters permission to camp there. With many townspeople supporting the veterans, an emergency town meeting was held. When no agreement was reached, the veterans and their Lexington supporters decided to remain on the Green. At 3 AM on Sunday, they were all arrested in the largest mass arrest in Massachusetts history. After being tried, convicted, and fined $5.00 each, they continued their march to Boston.

The rest of the piece goes on to talk objectively not just about the incident, but about divided opinions over the war, including the rationale of those in favor of continued US engagement.

Had I been there and of age, I would have been on the side of the protesters.  In this case, although the law was clear and the veterans, for reasons of political strategy, rejected a compromise proposal to allow them to camp nearby , it arguably would have made sense to grant an exception to a rule created for other purposes altogether.  Opponents sought to exploit that rule for their own political ends, though both sides no doubt thought they were best honoring the historical importance of the site.

Still, now that I've served in Town Meeting and recently joined the Select Board, I have to confess that I can better appreciate the technical arguments and the complexity of choices that local governments face. 

The famed New England "commons," used for public purposes ranging from grazing of flocks to markets and militia drills, were originally parts of the huge royal highways, laid out 40 rods (660 feet) wide.  As such, even if they from the later nineteenth century on acquired the character of parks, they are still considered part of the "public way," and thus under the jurisdiction of the Select Board (a collective executive in locales governed by a town meeting rather than mayor and council).  This is often a source of confusion in historic-preservation discussions as well as much else.

The real issue here, of course, was not who controlled the Common, but how and for what purpose.  We spend a lot of time trying to find that elusive middle ground that honors both procedures and outcomes.

At times, we are asked to disregard or bend the rules on the grounds, "but how could that possibly hurt??"  People don't understand that, particularly here, where local government long had a reputation as polarizing, arbitrary, and inefficient, an ad hoc approach that values procedures only to the extent that they produce desired results can erode confidence in the entire system. That said, not all rules and situations are equally important, and one needs to have a sense of balance.  Both myopic and rigid adherence to process, on the one hand, and cavalier disregard for process, on the other, can feed political frustration and cynicism. 

In still other cases, we are asked to vote on issues far beyond the scope of local government or otherwise having purely symbolic value. Here, too, there are philosophical differences. Some of us consider such measures to be essential and even heroic collective statements of moral principle while others of us see them as time-wasting and potentially divisive empty gestures that hamper our ability to accomplish the tasks clearly within our purview.  (A case in point was the debate last fall over inviting cleared Guantanamo inmates to settle here (1, 2)—even though current national law does not allow for their relocation within the United States.)

Of course, the founding fathers knew this democracy stuff would not be easy—but they also knew it was a hell of a lot better than the alternative.

Oh, yes, and, in case you didn't read the rest of the Mass Moments article: (1) the protesters were correct in concluding that the camping ban and arrests only increased publicity and sympathy for their cause, and (2) "At the next election, all the incumbents lost their seats on the Board of Selectmen."

28 May, 585 BCE: Birth of Science (according to Bob Park)

How nice to be able to pin an epochal event in the development of humanity to a specific date. Physicist Bob Park has it figured out:

[May 21] BIRTH OF SCIENCE: NEXT FRIDAY, MAY 28, SCIENCE WILL BE 2,595 YEARS OLD.
On May 28, 585 B.C. the swath of a total solar eclipse passed over the Greek island of Miletus. The early Greek philosopher, Thales of Miletus, alone understood what was happening. The world's first recorded freethinker, Thales rejected all supernatural explanations, and used the occasion to state the first law of science: every observable effect has a physical cause. The 585 B.C. eclipse is now taken to mark the birth of science, and Thales is honored as the father. What troubles would be spared the world if the education of every child began with causality? We might, for example, have been spared the absurd cell phone/cancer myth.

[May 28] SCIENCE: BORN ON THIS DAY 2595 YEARS AGO.
Not everyone agreed with the designation May 28 as the birthday of science. It marks the day that Thales of Miletus is alleged to have predicted a solar eclipse. One reader thought the discovery of fire would be a better choice, but of course we don't know when that happened or who did it. Cause and effect on the other hand applies to all science. We can begin with any phenomenon and in principle trace its cause and the cause of its cause backward through time to the merger of all such tracks at the Big Bang, beyond which presumably no tracks remain. We are trying to re-create the last footprints with the LHC. We need a beginning that applies to all of science. Causality does that.

Religion seems to be a universal, transcultural human phenomenon dating back to deep time (some would say, it's hard-wired into our brains, though that's a complex issue). In part for that reason, no one can tell us precisely on what date it began. By contrast, even if we are endowed with rationality, the application of that rationality in systematic ways to the physical world implies a departure. Another of the differences between science and religion.

Spring Scenes (I): Flora, Fortuna, History

I'm really tired of talking about the divestment idiocy and campus politics and would much rather turn my attention to other, more properly historical issues.  As a transition and diversion, a few images of and thoughts about spring and nature in our western Massachusetts region.

high water almost reaches the canal bridge, Turners Falls

Turners Falls:  old mill buildings on the Connecticut River

The winter was a mild one with little snow, but the early onset of warm weather, along with ample rain, struck many as atypical.  One saw the effects throughout the landscape and in the garden. This all brings up further questions of what we take to be usual or unusual.

Most people are at least vaguely aware that the arrival of European settlers transformed that landscape and its ecology, in large ways and small.  Certainly, we think of the big effects of the "Columbian Exchange":  tomatoes, potatoes, maize, tobacco, chocolate (and much more) from the Americas, and horses, pigs, cows, and sheep (and much more, including devastating communicable diseases) from the Old World (there has been a lot of back-and-forth about syphilis, but current scholarship seems to support the view that the virulent sexually transmitted form of the disease was essentially of American origin).  It doesn't end there.  The Europeans also brought with them the honey bee and earthworm (the former, deliberately; the latter, apparently not [1, 2])

Seen in this light, the phrase, "as American as apple pie," takes on new significance, for the common apple (Malus domestica) was a European fruit, with deep origins in Central Asia.  Why else did the John Chapman (a.k.a.  the legendary "Johnny Appleseed"), born in Leominster, not far east of here, have to make such great efforts to promote its cultivation on the American frontier?  (the fact that his varieties were suited for cider—alcoholic beverage— production rather than use as edible fruit is another complication, but we dare not digress further).  Historically speaking, apple pie is as much—or little—"American" as tomato sauce is "Italian" and the prevalence of paprika in a cuisine is "Hungarian": in each case, the key ingredient in the national dish originally came from the other hemisphere.

The exchange includes much that we likewise take for granted in the domestic garden.  Europeans coming to the Americas brought with them the familiar and the valued and sent back eagerly awaited specimens of new plants. The rose (found in Europe as well as Asia) and the lilac (originally native to the Balkans) are but two of the best-known examples of the former. In The Young Gardener's Assistant (11th ed., 1844), Thomas Bridgeman  said "Syringa vulgaris, or common Lilac, blooming in May, is well known to all, and needs no comment," though he went into more detail regarding less familiar varieties.

 

 "Common" or "Dutch" crocuses (Crocus vernus), 

just after the vernal equinox

We here regard the crocus as one of the "traditional" harbingers of spring, but the plant is in fact native to regions stretching form the Mediterranean to China.

As Bridgeman put it, describing "the beauties of April and May," "Before the trees have ventured to unfold their leaves, and while the icicles are pendant on our houses, the Snow-drop breaks her way through the frozen soil, fearless of danger.  Next peeps out the Crocus, but cautiously and with an air of timidity.  She shuns the howling blasts, and cleaves closely to her humble situation."

In Flora's Interpreter (first ed., 1848) Sarah Josepha Hale—she who gave us Thanksgiving—accurately described the crocus as "One of the earliest spring flowers" and identified it with "youthful gladness," citing a poem that aptly reflects our meteorological conditions this year:

Glad as the spring, when the first Crocus comes

To laugh amid the shower.—

                                                       Marvin

Soon afterward, England, having bested the Netherlands in the competition for industry and empire, could turn its attention to the horticultural field, as well.  In the words of George Glenny (1851), "Our tulip-growers have beaten the Dutch in the quality of their best novelties, and we see no reason why we should not beat them in crocuses."

The nineteenth-century American garden was likewise an unprecedented site of cultural and ecological  interchange, featuring traditional European plants, newly domesticated native ones, and, increasingly, exotics from other parts of the world.

the Romantic American garden as cultural meeting place

The most familiar plant here is the common daffodil (narcissus).  At left, the turtlehead (Chelone glabra), represented by some half a dozen species, is a relative of the foxglove and native to North America.  To the right, new leaves of the hosta pop up.  Now one of the most diverse and popular garden plants, hostas (originally classified as Funkia), came from Asia, reached England in the eighteeenth century, and began to become popular in the United States in the second third of the nineteenth. In the background, a carpet of a traditional herb, sweet woodruff (Asperula odorata), which prospers even in the shade under trees.

Common "Bleeding Heart" (traditionally classified as Dicentra spectabilis, but now Lamprocapnos spectabilis). This native of northeast Asia is now so common that we take it for granted. (Indeed, according to the standard reference work, there are more specimens in our gardens than in the wild.) It was  cultivated briefly in Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century but not established in England untii 1846, after which it made its way across the Atlantic. In fact, the leaflet on the recreated eighteenth-century gardens at the Strong House (Amherst History Museum) apologetically describes it as a Victorian interloper:  once planted there, it was too popular with the public, and allowed to remain.

Barrenwort (genus Epimedium), whose species mainly come from Asia, was introduced to the west in the past century and a half.  Fun facts to know and tell: Turns out that Epimedium, long regarded as an aphrodisiac in Asia, contains a compound similar to the active ingredient in Viagra (who knew?).