The British are coming!

Playing on the historical story of Paul Revere and, perhaps more subtly, the fact that we may have more to fear from large corporations than from countries.

Market St, Past and Present

Despite the sunny spring weather, I found the below sight on Market St in Old City this weekend rather depressing:
Images like this of urban decay alternate with hip boutiques and historic buildings in Old City and other parts of Philly. What did this same spot look like just over 100 years ago?

Photo of 306 Market St by Frank Taylor, undated, Free Library of Philadelphia

It was certainly a lot more quaint in the past, but look closely: the sidewalks were filthy (just like now!) and while the horses in the picture might look cute, they didn't smell cute.

Here's another view of that same area in an undated postcard, all spiffied up with added coloring and the ultra-modern trolley system.

Free Library of Philadelphia

And finally, William Birch's 1800 rendering of the Southeast Corner of Market and 3rd

New York Public Library

Some further historical digging shows that this part historic/part gentrified/part decayed block was home to a drug store owned by the son of famed botanist William Bartram in 1785, several homes of the prominent Wistar family, a dry goods store, and the terminus of a railroad.

To check out more (and hopefully more encouraging) historical image comparisons, check out the Free Library's photo map.

Virginia is for lovers...of confederate history!

It seems logical enough that the state of Virginia, home of numerous Civil War battlefields and historic sites, would want its residents to know about the state's wartime past. It's good for general knowledge and for tourism. Perhaps, then, the state would even have a month devoted to the history of the war--Civil War History Month, perhaps, just like Women's History or African American History Months.

But this is the state where in recent months state universities were told to end their anti-discrimination policies towards gays and the state legislature passed a bill to allow residents to carry guns into restaurants. So, in true Virginian style, the governor signed a proclamation today making April "Confederate History Month."

You could argue that since Virginia was the seat of the Confederacy, this makes some sense. But beyond the far-from-PC name choice, there is the proclamation itself. While the last governor to make the proclamation in 2002, Jim Gilmore, had added language condemning slavery to George Allen*'s original 1997 declaration, the current governor Bob McDonnell's proclamation never mentions slavery. The proclamation also describes the conflict as "a four year war between the states for independence."

The language choices are hardly surprising, given that the group which urged McDonnell to sign the proclamation is the Sons of Confederate Veterans. The opening lines on the group's website claims that: "The preservation of liberty and freedom was the motivating factor in the South's decision to fight the Second American Revolution" [italics in original]. The "charge" to the group is to fight for "the vindication of the cause for which we fought" and to defend the Confederates' virtues, principles, and ideals. I don't think it's overreaching to suggest that all this is code for protecting white supremacy and pushing back against the federal government.

The truth is that this proclamation isn't really about the past, anyway; it's about making a political appeal to a conservative base that remains uncomfortably similar to Virginians 150 years ago. While it's still legal to discriminate against gays and people who would prefer not to get shot, even Virginia politicians realize they can't directly go after African Americans. The confederate past has been revived not to learn from the past but as a present-day tool for the state's bigots.

*Yes, this is the Allen of "macaca" fame.


UPDATE: Check out the Washington Post's strongly-worded editorial on this subject

ANOTHER, more positive, UPDATE: McDonnell apologizes and adds anti-slavery language

Liz Lemon defends Philly and Franklin

That is, the fictional character Liz Lemon on last week's episode of 30 Rock. As soon as I heard that Comcast was buying NBC, I wondered what this would do for the plot of 30 Rock--which revolves in part around a GE executive's control of a division of NBC. Well, the Philly-bashing began when fictional executive Jack Donaghy announced NBC's acquisition by Kabletown, headquartered in (said with distaste) Philadelphia. Perhaps the best quote of the night revolved around Philadelphia's favorite historic citizen, Ben Franklin.

Jack Donaghy on his hometown of Boston: "Boston tea party, Boston cream pie...birthplace of Benjamin Franklin."
Liz Lemon: "Yeah, then he looked around, realized it sucked, and moved to Philadelphia!"

Franklin's own version of that story in his autobiography: "I was rather inclined to leave Boston when I reflected that I had already made myself a little obnoxious to the governing party, and from the arbitrary proceedings of the Assembly in my brother's case, it was likely I might, if I stayed, soon bring myself into scrapes, and farther, that my indiscreet disputations about religion began to make me pointed at with horror by good people as an infidel or atheist."

Franklin then headed for New York before getting a tip about a job in Philadelphia, where he finally made his home. I visited the site of his house with a friend; all that remains is a modern outline of the house on the place where it would have stood. Franklin might or might not be delighted to know that below the site of his house is an underground museum with comically outdated technology and cheesy exhibitions, which another blogger has perfectly captured here. It would be the perfect scene for a 30 Rock episode when the cast has to come to town for a meeting with Kabletown/Comcast....

Texas is SO 1990's

Actually, it's not a joking matter. Texas's Board of Education has hearkened back to the culture wars of the early 1990s, particularly the fight over national history standards, with their new changes to the state curriculum. But there is something notably more partisan about the Texas story than the fight in the '90s. When the standards written in 1994 were attacked by Lynne Cheney, then head of the National Endowment for Humanities, the debate was more about conservatives' wanting to see more about white leaders and national triumphs, and less about minorities and conflict. The Texas Board of Ed would agree with that, but they've gone farther: they want to emphasize Republican tenets and accomplishments. The changes include:

• removing Jefferson from the discussion of people who influenced the Age of Revolutions because he supported separation of church and state
• Christianizing the founders and the basis of American government
  
• emphasizing the success of the "free-enterprise" rather than "capitalist" system
• praising Nixon and Reagan's "leadership"
• adding discussion of Phyllis Schlafly, the NRA, the Contract with America, and the Heritage Foundation

Newspaper coverage of these changes has emphasized the importance of Texas's standards because the state is a large market for textbooks. But what I can't fathom is what reputable historian--because, let's remember, textbooks are written by historians and not politicians--would agree to tailor a text to such overtly partisan ends. Yes, there is money involved, and that is probably going to overrule some underpaid historian's ethical objections. It's too touchy to have professional codes violating this sort of politically-motivated historical work, because the line is a tough one to draw.

That said, historians are experts in history, and the dentist who heads Texas's Board of Ed is certainly not. The fact that conservatives have been able to marginalize the expertise of historians by arguing that all academics are liberally-biased is perhaps the Right's biggest triumph in the culture wars. To argue for complexity and nuance is now considered liberal. Perhaps that's now actually true: the chairman of the GOP doesn't even know the meaning of the word "nuance."

I think that Texas Board of Ed member Mavis Knight, an African-American Democrat from Dallas, captured the problems of the Right's approach in the culture wars best:

We are painting this false picture of America. We are not unified, even now. We're struggling to be, but you would have us think that we're in some kind of utopia that does not exist, and so until we mature more, we're going to look at where we have been and what obstacles we have overcome so that we won't continue to repeat some of the bad habits that we had in the past.

If only this smoothing over of struggles was the only problem with Texas's new standards.

Philadelphia Skating Club performing a rescue as others skate happily on the Schuylkill in Fairmount Park in the late 19th century; image courtesy Library Company of Philadelphia

This has been a winter to empower the global warming naysayers--with a few snowstorms and freezing temperatures, it's hard to believe that the plant is getting warmer, on average. But a look back in time shows that we've just gotten wimpy.

This past weekend's bitter cold doesn't approach the cold of winters past in Philadelphia. A low in the teens, like we had this weekend, is abnormally cold these days. But most of the record lows for the city are much, much colder--with many below zero. Imagine being in Philly on February 9th, 1934: it was -11 degrees Fahrenheit.

Images even show that people could ice skate on the Schuylkill River in the late nineteenth century, and one image from the winter of 1856 shows skaters on the Delaware. Overall, as this graph shows, the past 20 years have been trending warmer. That historical perspective isn't making me feel any warmer, though!

Liveblogging the State of the Union

Some blogs had "liveblogging" updates during the State of the Union. I find these speeches painfully boring, in part because they are constantly broken up by partisan applause. So I wondered what unique take I could offer on the SOTU...and what else besides tracking the (often cheesy) history references. So, here goes.

9:05: PBS Commentator Mark Shields suggests that having the new governor of Virginia give the response to the SOTU from the VA State House is like a "State of the Confederacy." Jim Lehrer is not sure how to handle this.
9:11: Obama opens with history of SOTU; "it's tempting to look back on these moments and assume our progress was inevitable." I am very disappointed to hear that America's greatness was not preordained.
9:12: references Bull Run, Civil Rights Marches, the landing at Normandy
9:13: "we must answer history's call" (Somehow it seems like nobody can agree how to pick up the phone to answer that call).
9:18: has a president ever laughed during the SOTU?
9:21: wow another joke? this may be historic.
9:27: "From the first railroads, to the interstate highway system, our nation has always been built to compete." The Smithsonian has that story covered.
9:34: "We made the largest research investment in history." John Quincy Adams would be proud; people thought he was nuts when he proposed that the govt support research in the 1820s.
9:49: points out that in 2000, we had a massive budget surplus. That does seem like ancient history.
9:51: announces no new spending for the next 3 years. Oh well, so much for Keynesian economics or learning from the Depression.
9:58: "the Supreme Court reversed a century of law" with the campaign finance decision. The camera pans to the justices and they stare foreword blankly.
10:00: the debates between parties are 200 years old and are "the essence of our democracy." Hoftstadter would love that.
10:03: "through-out our history, no issue has united our country so much as national security." Hmm, not sure about that. See Alien and Sedition Act backlash and then almost every national security move since.
10:09: on nuclear power--"I've embraced the strategy of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan." I'm confused. I think he just wanted to make sure to get their names in somewhere.
10:14: "It's our ideals, our values, that built America, values that allowed us to forge a nation made up of immigrants from every quarter of the globe. Values that drive us still." These values: the American dream of immigrants...and the nativism of Americans.
10:18: "The only reason we are here is that generations of Americans were unafraid to do what was hard."
10:20: "The spirit that has sustained this nation for 200 years lives on in you." Nice line.
10:28: Mark Shields says Obama was Reaganesque; "He invoked the country's past to give a sense of confidence about where we are now. And nobody did that better than Ronald Reagan."

Image: George Washington's State of the Union address--the first ever--on January 21, 1790