"Fire's Manifest Destiny," or --
"How the West Was Lost."
By Chip Ward on Tomdispatch.com.
Apocalypse is now, here in the United States.
The cowboy movie gave way to Science Fiction, and today the west is an apocalyptic science-fiction disaster movie. Flames from Georgia to California.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Monday, June 13, 2011
White Man's Country
The set of sf/f genre marketed as Urban Fantasy is not generally of reading interest to me personally, but that doesn't interfere with acknowledging the positive things it has brought to the SF/F Reading table. Diversity of characters and cultures in the genre is excellent news for the genre as a whole. You can start with the nomenclature of its marketing category --Urban Fantasy. In marketing other products, to employ 'urban' as a defining descriptor means 'black,' or African American.
You must first be able to imagine something other than what is before something other than what is can come into being.
My take is this: the Western, its revisionist historical, and, as well, its mythological space was exclusive to white people. There were some Indians (who are convenient antagonists who prove the protagonist's exceptional expertise) and occasionally Mexicans and even more occasionally Asians. Black people, like slavery, were disappeared from the history of the Western Territories. This entertainment / mythological paradigm of the historic west was, of course very different from the history. This applies particularly to the presence and influence of women and of African Americans, not to mention Asians and Mexicans and Indians.
With Civil Rights, Voting Rights, Feminism, the defeat of the American century in Vietnam, the Western's mythology was no longer functioning satisfactorily. In attempts to revive the Western, we saw then, finally, what some call the Civil Rights Western, with black protagonists. This was a long road in Hollywood, and there were signposts along the way in the Westerns that African Americans could be and someday would be full citizens in the west, in the nation, and we were trying to imagine that day, and what it would look like.
Successful Westerns, for instance the 1939 The Outlaw Jesse James, spawned over a dozen remakes. This did not happen with the Civil Rights Western, because it was antithetical the White Man's mythological vision of the west. Putting black male protagonists front and center spoiled the mythology. It forced consideration of the nation's actual history of the south and of the west, and its connections to slavery and the Civil War, which Hollywood and the audience did not like. As the great historian of the nation from colonial era to the present, Professor Richard Slotkin, states: "The Western is about white supremacy." When the white supremacy is taken out, the mythological space implodes.
Additionally, Slotkin says, when the politics of white supremacy and local time history elements are removed from the western, "...it becomes clear that it is about S-E-X, particularly if the protagonist is female." The place of the female in the Western is usually to inform the audience which of the men is good, is bad, who to sympathize with and so on. If she's the protagonist all those signals disappear.
So, then, it’s the 70′s and the Western is dead. But a new (mythological space) frontier emerges in our national imagination. This one had been until the 70's and Star Wars more the space of those who regarded themselves as outsiders rather than to the mainstream sort who used to make Westerns solid box office and publishing profits.
Still, mythologically, reaching back as far as Burroughs's John Carter of Mars — the Western has always spawned at least some sets of SF/F. Like the Western there were no female protagonists or females of agency, or so few as to not matter; the same for POC and gay or transgendered — and if they were there, they are either to be rescued, be rewards, be magically useful, be victims that are avenged by the (white, male) protagonist, or be the villains.
SF/F, and particularly, space opera, in those decades was still safe space for USian White Man's country, for only we USians had the wealth and the technology to go there in covered wagon shuttles (the space race with the Soviet Union was a convenient goad, foil and antagonist for getting more funding), go there in imagination via Dreamworks and the like, and the publishing industry to support the fiction. We controlled distribution space. Outer Space -- vast, empty, we could populate as we liked, even with non-human, non-flesh, robots and mechs.
But now it seems the Other is again crowding over the frontier and filling this once safe country — POC, Women, the gay, and even non USians, non-Europeans, are playing in space, both in imagination and in efforts to get there in shuttles, explorers, and other technologies, and claim it for themselves. And the Space Race competition died with the dissolution of the Soviet Union competition.
It’s not a coincidence, one thinks, that this borderland of urban fantasy in sf/f, that includes the steampunk, is ‘urban.’It is in the cities where diversity begins. New Orleans had the largest population of free people of color of any city in the U.S. when Jefferson bought it. Baltimore had the largest population of free people of color at the run-up to the Civil War. NYC was a close, close second. All three of these cities were magnets for immigrants as well. That’s just three examples.
We're imagining full citizenship for everybody in Urban Fantasy.
I’m most curious to see where White Man’s Country is next located.
You must first be able to imagine something other than what is before something other than what is can come into being.
My take is this: the Western, its revisionist historical, and, as well, its mythological space was exclusive to white people. There were some Indians (who are convenient antagonists who prove the protagonist's exceptional expertise) and occasionally Mexicans and even more occasionally Asians. Black people, like slavery, were disappeared from the history of the Western Territories. This entertainment / mythological paradigm of the historic west was, of course very different from the history. This applies particularly to the presence and influence of women and of African Americans, not to mention Asians and Mexicans and Indians.
With Civil Rights, Voting Rights, Feminism, the defeat of the American century in Vietnam, the Western's mythology was no longer functioning satisfactorily. In attempts to revive the Western, we saw then, finally, what some call the Civil Rights Western, with black protagonists. This was a long road in Hollywood, and there were signposts along the way in the Westerns that African Americans could be and someday would be full citizens in the west, in the nation, and we were trying to imagine that day, and what it would look like.
Successful Westerns, for instance the 1939 The Outlaw Jesse James, spawned over a dozen remakes. This did not happen with the Civil Rights Western, because it was antithetical the White Man's mythological vision of the west. Putting black male protagonists front and center spoiled the mythology. It forced consideration of the nation's actual history of the south and of the west, and its connections to slavery and the Civil War, which Hollywood and the audience did not like. As the great historian of the nation from colonial era to the present, Professor Richard Slotkin, states: "The Western is about white supremacy." When the white supremacy is taken out, the mythological space implodes.
Additionally, Slotkin says, when the politics of white supremacy and local time history elements are removed from the western, "...it becomes clear that it is about S-E-X, particularly if the protagonist is female." The place of the female in the Western is usually to inform the audience which of the men is good, is bad, who to sympathize with and so on. If she's the protagonist all those signals disappear.
So, then, it’s the 70′s and the Western is dead. But a new (mythological space) frontier emerges in our national imagination. This one had been until the 70's and Star Wars more the space of those who regarded themselves as outsiders rather than to the mainstream sort who used to make Westerns solid box office and publishing profits.
Still, mythologically, reaching back as far as Burroughs's John Carter of Mars — the Western has always spawned at least some sets of SF/F. Like the Western there were no female protagonists or females of agency, or so few as to not matter; the same for POC and gay or transgendered — and if they were there, they are either to be rescued, be rewards, be magically useful, be victims that are avenged by the (white, male) protagonist, or be the villains.
SF/F, and particularly, space opera, in those decades was still safe space for USian White Man's country, for only we USians had the wealth and the technology to go there in covered wagon shuttles (the space race with the Soviet Union was a convenient goad, foil and antagonist for getting more funding), go there in imagination via Dreamworks and the like, and the publishing industry to support the fiction. We controlled distribution space. Outer Space -- vast, empty, we could populate as we liked, even with non-human, non-flesh, robots and mechs.
But now it seems the Other is again crowding over the frontier and filling this once safe country — POC, Women, the gay, and even non USians, non-Europeans, are playing in space, both in imagination and in efforts to get there in shuttles, explorers, and other technologies, and claim it for themselves. And the Space Race competition died with the dissolution of the Soviet Union competition.
It’s not a coincidence, one thinks, that this borderland of urban fantasy in sf/f, that includes the steampunk, is ‘urban.’It is in the cities where diversity begins. New Orleans had the largest population of free people of color of any city in the U.S. when Jefferson bought it. Baltimore had the largest population of free people of color at the run-up to the Civil War. NYC was a close, close second. All three of these cities were magnets for immigrants as well. That’s just three examples.
We're imagining full citizenship for everybody in Urban Fantasy.
I’m most curious to see where White Man’s Country is next located.
Friday, June 10, 2011
The War of Jenkin's Ear -- Random Musings
(1739-1743). Has been called the "most ridiculous war in military history."
Which war was the consequence of the War of the Spanish Succession. Underneath it all, it was a continuation of the wars of religion -- Protestant England vs Catholic Holy Roman Empire.
If I am recalling correctly, this is the second Golden Age of Piracy, with Spain, France and England mutually at each others' throats. It was over trade, due to the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), that concluded the War of the Spanish Sucession. The (a Bourbon, i.e. French) Spanish monarch awarded England (the British South Sea Company) the asiento, the monopoly over the slave supply to the Spanish American colonies.
The Gentlemen's Magazine, 1747, out of London provides a descriptive list of taken merchant vessels and taken privateers as well. There was so much action at sea with the privateers and the merchant vessels one could almost wonder if this war was merely a pretext to go pillaging on the water.
Full text of the list, via google books.
Even Marylanders got in their licks, both as booty and as privateers. This war marks the first time 'American' was used by His Majesty's service as opposed to English, and the first time Britain used her colonial troops outside of North America. Only two-thirds returned. So far as we know, there were none from Maryland. George Washington's stepbrother Lawrence was an aide to Admiral Edward Vernon ("Old Grog"). According to mythology, Vernon, being so disgusted with the amount of rum his forces consumed, had water added to the bottles, thus creating Grog. Upon Lawrence's return, he established his estate on the Potomac -- presumably with his share of the naval campaign booty, which would have been considerable due to his rank as aide to the Admiral -- which he named -- Mount Vernon.
On the heels -- stern? -- of the War of Jenkin's Ear, followed the War of Austrian Succession, mostly fought in Europe. Here it was called King George's War (1744-1748) and was fought mostly in Canada. What we call the French and Indian Wars here, the Seven Years War in Europe (1754 to 1763), soon followed King George's War. These are all installments, some say, of the eternal struggle for global, colonial, political and trade dominance between England and France. Maryland troops participated in all three.
The War of Independence was part of that same struggle, because without the aid of France there wouldn't have been independence -- for instance, without the French naval blockade and instruction in siege and sapping, Corwallis might well be sitting still in Yorktown today. France provided the financial and military aid because it snooted Britain's cock, not so much because of a love of American ideals of liberty.
The extended imperial, global struggle among England, France and Spain, reveals to the historian that the North American colonists were not as innocent of military experience as Revolutionary mythology proposes. A significant contingent of them had been gaining real experience since the first days of the first colonial foundings. Thus, when war was declared there wasn't a rush to howl in delirious joy, throw hats and wigs into the air, and giggle, "We'll beat 'em by Christmas," -- unlike the secesh of the CSA.
Dates are your historical compasses, anchors, ballast and buoys in the heaving sea of Contingency.
Which war was the consequence of the War of the Spanish Succession. Underneath it all, it was a continuation of the wars of religion -- Protestant England vs Catholic Holy Roman Empire.
If I am recalling correctly, this is the second Golden Age of Piracy, with Spain, France and England mutually at each others' throats. It was over trade, due to the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), that concluded the War of the Spanish Sucession. The (a Bourbon, i.e. French) Spanish monarch awarded England (the British South Sea Company) the asiento, the monopoly over the slave supply to the Spanish American colonies.
The Gentlemen's Magazine, 1747, out of London provides a descriptive list of taken merchant vessels and taken privateers as well. There was so much action at sea with the privateers and the merchant vessels one could almost wonder if this war was merely a pretext to go pillaging on the water.
Full text of the list, via google books.
Even Marylanders got in their licks, both as booty and as privateers. This war marks the first time 'American' was used by His Majesty's service as opposed to English, and the first time Britain used her colonial troops outside of North America. Only two-thirds returned. So far as we know, there were none from Maryland. George Washington's stepbrother Lawrence was an aide to Admiral Edward Vernon ("Old Grog"). According to mythology, Vernon, being so disgusted with the amount of rum his forces consumed, had water added to the bottles, thus creating Grog. Upon Lawrence's return, he established his estate on the Potomac -- presumably with his share of the naval campaign booty, which would have been considerable due to his rank as aide to the Admiral -- which he named -- Mount Vernon.
On the heels -- stern? -- of the War of Jenkin's Ear, followed the War of Austrian Succession, mostly fought in Europe. Here it was called King George's War (1744-1748) and was fought mostly in Canada. What we call the French and Indian Wars here, the Seven Years War in Europe (1754 to 1763), soon followed King George's War. These are all installments, some say, of the eternal struggle for global, colonial, political and trade dominance between England and France. Maryland troops participated in all three.
The War of Independence was part of that same struggle, because without the aid of France there wouldn't have been independence -- for instance, without the French naval blockade and instruction in siege and sapping, Corwallis might well be sitting still in Yorktown today. France provided the financial and military aid because it snooted Britain's cock, not so much because of a love of American ideals of liberty.
The extended imperial, global struggle among England, France and Spain, reveals to the historian that the North American colonists were not as innocent of military experience as Revolutionary mythology proposes. A significant contingent of them had been gaining real experience since the first days of the first colonial foundings. Thus, when war was declared there wasn't a rush to howl in delirious joy, throw hats and wigs into the air, and giggle, "We'll beat 'em by Christmas," -- unlike the secesh of the CSA.
Dates are your historical compasses, anchors, ballast and buoys in the heaving sea of Contingency.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
History Has Become a Primary Battleground for Possession of the Present and the Future
We see it here in the U.S. with the Exceptionalist vs. the Marxist historian, the cultural vs the great (white) man, neo-conservative vs. the progressive -- and no more clearly do we see it than in the current battles over who owns the ultimate cause of the Civil War: was it slavery or was it anything, everything, whatever else?
I've always been a history person; it was one half of my double specialization through all my degrees. However, I used to be the only one at a party who might make a historical reference, a reference that nobody else would get or even notice. That has changed so much in the last 15 years or so. This is good.
It's not only the case for this nation. An old friend from Italy has his film premiered at the Walter Reed - Lincoln Center Italian Film series this week. It's a 3 hour national epic film dramatizing the struggle for il Risorgimento, following three grunts, so to speak, over several decades of the struggle. It concludes with disillusionment and cynicism, for the same Italian power elites that battled the progressive forces in alliance with the Catholic Church and the French and the Savoyard kings have also taken over the unification and are back running things their way.
This film is very controversial in Italy. The youth, the students love it. It has become so popular that the state television is going to broadcast it in three parts after refusing to do so. The dialog, the speeches, the texts quoted, the newsapaper essays -- all of the words, M. took from primary documented source materials. Though the Berlusconi forces hate the film they can't argue with what it says about the factionization and the betrayals even within the movement of the glorious unification -- as it is taught in the schools.
Does that sound familiar?
So we played hooky today and went to the movies. It's 96 degrees, there is a heat index warning and an air quality warning. It's gonna be 100 by Friday, They Say. We had a splendid time after the film, having a late lunch? early dinner? before Mario and his art historian wife had to get on a plane. From inside the a/c restaurant it looked lovely in the streets around Lincoln Center-- the June light, the lush foliage from the cold wet winter and spring, all the tourists. I felt, "This is what people imagine living in NYC is like when they come to NYC." It was change of pace fun.
We talked of the film, the conditions in Italy, the fortress at the end of Italy where the refugees are held (ye ole Scylla and Charybdis -- both Mario and his wife are stone Naples scions) -- I thought, "I'm not in in C'town now." I also thought, "It would be worth it to get them somehow to New Orleans, to check out the Italian history there as a possibility for a new project."
I've always been a history person; it was one half of my double specialization through all my degrees. However, I used to be the only one at a party who might make a historical reference, a reference that nobody else would get or even notice. That has changed so much in the last 15 years or so. This is good.
It's not only the case for this nation. An old friend from Italy has his film premiered at the Walter Reed - Lincoln Center Italian Film series this week. It's a 3 hour national epic film dramatizing the struggle for il Risorgimento, following three grunts, so to speak, over several decades of the struggle. It concludes with disillusionment and cynicism, for the same Italian power elites that battled the progressive forces in alliance with the Catholic Church and the French and the Savoyard kings have also taken over the unification and are back running things their way.
This film is very controversial in Italy. The youth, the students love it. It has become so popular that the state television is going to broadcast it in three parts after refusing to do so. The dialog, the speeches, the texts quoted, the newsapaper essays -- all of the words, M. took from primary documented source materials. Though the Berlusconi forces hate the film they can't argue with what it says about the factionization and the betrayals even within the movement of the glorious unification -- as it is taught in the schools.
Does that sound familiar?
So we played hooky today and went to the movies. It's 96 degrees, there is a heat index warning and an air quality warning. It's gonna be 100 by Friday, They Say. We had a splendid time after the film, having a late lunch? early dinner? before Mario and his art historian wife had to get on a plane. From inside the a/c restaurant it looked lovely in the streets around Lincoln Center-- the June light, the lush foliage from the cold wet winter and spring, all the tourists. I felt, "This is what people imagine living in NYC is like when they come to NYC." It was change of pace fun.
We talked of the film, the conditions in Italy, the fortress at the end of Italy where the refugees are held (ye ole Scylla and Charybdis -- both Mario and his wife are stone Naples scions) -- I thought, "I'm not in in C'town now." I also thought, "It would be worth it to get them somehow to New Orleans, to check out the Italian history there as a possibility for a new project."
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Television & History -- TNT's *Falling Skies*
When speaking of the 1939 film, Jesse James, Richard Slotkin stated that movies, particularly genre films like westerns, are always commenting on two eras of history: the era in which the film set, and the era in which the film is made.
The sf series Falling Skies debutes this month on TNT, with much Steven Spielberg guidance, and, boding badly, Mark Verheiden who is the fellow muchly responsible for the mess that was the neo-Battlestar Galactica.
Why 'boding badly?' Because this concept of Space Aliens Want Earth's High School Kids! is supposed to be inspired by the US War of Independence.
Returning to Prof. Slotkin's statement that what we see on screen in genres, particularly if they are supposedly invoking an historical past -- we know by their own words that the historical past the producers of Falling Skies are invoking is that of the Independence era. But what about the historical moment in which the program is being made?
Is this true, that this is our only choice, and if we make the wrong choice the invaders of the U.S. will win? But haven't the invaders already won, since they wiped out all but 20% of the population? What is the tipping point for loss when an army can not longer fight? Isn't it when something like 15% of their fellows are hors de combat that soldiers lose confidence and the battle's lost? Who are the alien invaders standing in for? This is sooooooooooooo sf -- why do the aliens only want Our Children? Evidently, by the trailers I've seen, the only surviving children in the surviving 20% are Our White Children.
The embedded approval of fascism / warlordism in television invasion series like Red Dawn and V has always been there. This sounds kind of the same, though I do admit I've seen nothing but trailers, so that has to be factored in.
Then, there is this:
This series was hot at last summer's Comic Con, so it's been muchly looked forward to by many.
But on another level, some of us are gloomy gusses who persist on raining on Other People's parades and harshing their squee because in this climate "it's just fun to watch guys shooting machine guns at aliens" while providing an either / or binary of dictatorship or democracy doesn't seem like a productive idea, 'entertainment' or not. We're the sort who believe that words and images blasted into our brains matter, otherwise there wouldn't be ad agencies, and elections wouldn't generate so much revenue for them and the media.
We still don't know who the aliens are standing in for. Judging by the rhetoric that's violent, threatening and relentlessly pointed at people like us since the Nixonian era we know it is very likely you and me.
The sf series Falling Skies debutes this month on TNT, with much Steven Spielberg guidance, and, boding badly, Mark Verheiden who is the fellow muchly responsible for the mess that was the neo-Battlestar Galactica.
Why 'boding badly?' Because this concept of Space Aliens Want Earth's High School Kids! is supposed to be inspired by the US War of Independence.
"He said he suddenly saw the show “as an allegory for the American Revolution: noncombatants against a vastly overwhelming military force,” he said. Originally the series was called “Concord,” after the 1775 battle. (The title changed when the references became less overt in later drafts.)
Mr. Wyle plays Tom Mason, a history professor in Boston whose wife dies during the invasion. (Mr. Rodat said his own wife was a touch annoyed to have been killed off so early in their family’s parallel existence.) Because of his knowledge of military history Mason is appointed second in command of the 2nd Massachusetts, a resistance regiment protecting a group of civilians that includes two of his sons. The third boy has been abducted, and aliens have seared his spine to a “harness,” a many-tentacled metallic slug that appears to lull kids into a supplicant army. ....Does anyone consider that perhaps a military historian has a different kind of tool belt than an experienced military strategist and leader of men? women? teenagers? in real battles? And even then, regarding our War for Independence and General George Washington. He had military experience. He lost almost all of the battles that he commanded, before fighting the British and after he began fighting the British. General Grant, on the other hand, got his military experience in the Mexican War, and he not only won his battles for the Union in the Civil War, but devised strategy and tactics. Later in his life he wrote the most specific and useful history of those battles in his personal Memoirs. So, it is possible.
Returning to Prof. Slotkin's statement that what we see on screen in genres, particularly if they are supposedly invoking an historical past -- we know by their own words that the historical past the producers of Falling Skies are invoking is that of the Independence era. But what about the historical moment in which the program is being made?
"But the show’s central relationship is between the professor and Mr. Patton’s gruff, commanding Captain Weaver. “I’m the humanist, and he’s the warlord,” Mr. Wyle said. “I was interested in this idea of hitting the reset button on society, having to start from Square 1. The first season is about negotiating that line between a military dictatorship or a democracy, which is relevant today.”Why is our only choice a warlord or democracy? It wasn't in the Independence era -- it could have gone lot of different directions, and, in fact, we didn't have democracy with a small d until the first Jacksonian election, and even then women and Indians and the enslaved had not place in the democratic process.
Is this true, that this is our only choice, and if we make the wrong choice the invaders of the U.S. will win? But haven't the invaders already won, since they wiped out all but 20% of the population? What is the tipping point for loss when an army can not longer fight? Isn't it when something like 15% of their fellows are hors de combat that soldiers lose confidence and the battle's lost? Who are the alien invaders standing in for? This is sooooooooooooo sf -- why do the aliens only want Our Children? Evidently, by the trailers I've seen, the only surviving children in the surviving 20% are Our White Children.
The embedded approval of fascism / warlordism in television invasion series like Red Dawn and V has always been there. This sounds kind of the same, though I do admit I've seen nothing but trailers, so that has to be factored in.
Then, there is this:
“On another level,” he added, “it’s pure escapist entertainment. It’s just fun to watch guys shooting machine guns at aliens."
This series was hot at last summer's Comic Con, so it's been muchly looked forward to by many.
But on another level, some of us are gloomy gusses who persist on raining on Other People's parades and harshing their squee because in this climate "it's just fun to watch guys shooting machine guns at aliens" while providing an either / or binary of dictatorship or democracy doesn't seem like a productive idea, 'entertainment' or not. We're the sort who believe that words and images blasted into our brains matter, otherwise there wouldn't be ad agencies, and elections wouldn't generate so much revenue for them and the media.
We still don't know who the aliens are standing in for. Judging by the rhetoric that's violent, threatening and relentlessly pointed at people like us since the Nixonian era we know it is very likely you and me.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Chronology Is the Historian's Best Friend
This afternoon I was in the library, copyediting and proofing and just plain line editing a chapter among those we're sending on to Agent.* I hit this sentence that states a slave trader and merchant had also outfittted a privateer in 1752. I didn't write this sentence and I don't have the rest of ms. on me that provides the citation for the footnote. So I send el V an e-mail asking him, "Um, against whom did Galloway send that privateer in 1752? There weren't any wars at the moment that I can think of for which privateer action would have been acceptable."
El V e-mails back: "I wish I knew too." So then he goes digging into the citations. Turns out that was a typo. Not 1752 as he'd written, but 1757 -- big difference. Already the French and Indian Wars, as we called them over here, 1757, but not in 1752. In 1757 you could take a French vessel as a legal prize of war, but not in 1752.
But if I didn't know my dates I wouldn't have questioned el V about the date.
So don't believe anyone who says history shouldn't teach us dates because dates are boring so we shouldn't have to bother. Date are the platform via which all historic work begins. If your platform is erected on false chronology, everything else will be wrong too. (I'm not even going to get started on all the people who believe that history is only opinions, and there are no facts involved in historical studies.)
It's so great to have two of us doing this process.
__________________
* I was working in ms, actual printed out pages, not on screen, though I had the laptop plugged in, and the library's wi-fied, so I could e-mail el V -- unlike so many I was polite and courteous and thinking of others, so I E_MAILED, I did not phone and talk on the top of my voice.
Among the things at the top of the bewilderment list is this: I sit in a bookstore cafe -- a place of retail -- with a friend and we are talking. All around us come disaproving stares, and even demands that we be quiet because we are disturbing people studying, writing, whatever. However, in the effing LIBRARY, these same people eat, drink, talk on their cell phones and have a party with their peers, and think you're crazy for requesting them to modulate their voices lower or to not play music. One more sign that this country is insane.
El V e-mails back: "I wish I knew too." So then he goes digging into the citations. Turns out that was a typo. Not 1752 as he'd written, but 1757 -- big difference. Already the French and Indian Wars, as we called them over here, 1757, but not in 1752. In 1757 you could take a French vessel as a legal prize of war, but not in 1752.
But if I didn't know my dates I wouldn't have questioned el V about the date.
So don't believe anyone who says history shouldn't teach us dates because dates are boring so we shouldn't have to bother. Date are the platform via which all historic work begins. If your platform is erected on false chronology, everything else will be wrong too. (I'm not even going to get started on all the people who believe that history is only opinions, and there are no facts involved in historical studies.)
It's so great to have two of us doing this process.
__________________
* I was working in ms, actual printed out pages, not on screen, though I had the laptop plugged in, and the library's wi-fied, so I could e-mail el V -- unlike so many I was polite and courteous and thinking of others, so I E_MAILED, I did not phone and talk on the top of my voice.
Among the things at the top of the bewilderment list is this: I sit in a bookstore cafe -- a place of retail -- with a friend and we are talking. All around us come disaproving stares, and even demands that we be quiet because we are disturbing people studying, writing, whatever. However, in the effing LIBRARY, these same people eat, drink, talk on their cell phones and have a party with their peers, and think you're crazy for requesting them to modulate their voices lower or to not play music. One more sign that this country is insane.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Online Instruction - Slotkin Lectures, the Western
How much more cool and convenient can it be?
On your computer you can listen to a lecture on a western film (while working out!), then watch the film, then re-listen to the lecture, while having Slotkin's book open too.
Sometimes living in the 21st century is wonderful.
It was nearly 90 already when I went out to do errands at 10:30 AM. It is as I feared this summer: straight from 40's and 50's to high 80's and 90's.
On your computer you can listen to a lecture on a western film (while working out!), then watch the film, then re-listen to the lecture, while having Slotkin's book open too.
Sometimes living in the 21st century is wonderful.
It was nearly 90 already when I went out to do errands at 10:30 AM. It is as I feared this summer: straight from 40's and 50's to high 80's and 90's.
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