Buying indie, eating locally

I was just reading the beginning of Bill Bryson's nostalgic new biography, and he reminisces about "the glory of living in a world still free of global chains. Every community was special and nowhere was like everywhere else." I hope Bryson got to walk around the city a bit when he was here last month to give a talk (his voice, fyi, is suprisingly high), because a bit of that glory remains.

Today I had wonderful food, and I didn't have to enter a single chain store. Nor did I have to go out of my way. I picked up a chunk of pecorino fresca and a loaf of ciabatta at the market a few blocks away, fresh tomatoes a block from there, and went home to make a sandwich. On my way to campus I grabbed a chai latte at an indepedent coffee shop/art gallery. Then, for dinner, I ate at White Dog Cafe, a restaurant that specializes in locally produced goods, with a group of alums from my high school.

As I've mentioned in an earlier post, Slow Food is a big deal lately, and Philly is a great place for it. There's a group here that helps people find locally-grown food, plus a website with a similar purpose called Farm to Philly. There also seem to be farmer's markets all the time, including one on campus.

I've also found it pretty easy to find independent places (more likely to have local products, and better for the community to begin with) here; they predominate in my neighborhood. It's not the 1950s, but hey, I'm quite happy to have a Trader Joe's near by, too.

The political past

The New York Times and the liberal blogosphere have spent a fair amount of time lately discussing the legacy of Ronald Reagan--specifically, about a campaign speech he gave in 1979 that seems to have expressed solidarity with southern racists. Paul Krugman writes, "Why does this history matter now? Because it tells why the vision of a permanent conservative majority, so widely accepted a few years ago, is wrong." David Brooks, on the other hand, believes that "the truth is more complicated."

What struck me here is the contrast between how columnists like these analyse a historical event versus how historians would go about this. For people like Krugman and Brooks, it's an approach that my classmates note with disdain: a teleological one. This means, roughly, that they're starting with the end point and putting together evidence that leads up to that end. That end point is usually a political point for columnists, whereas historians are more likely to let readers infer the contemporary political connections on their own. Historians are concerned with how things might have turned out differently--in our terms, contingency.

Why is one stump speech Reagan made using coded political language for racism suddenly the topic of a flurry of debate? It probably has a lot to do with this year's campaign and republican invocations of Reagan, and very little to do with that speech's historical importance. To me, it's eerily familiar of what a superb Washington Post piece recently described as a debate about race in America that is "stuck in purgatory, a cycle of skirmishes." Columnists fixating on this speech in 1979 are doing just what historians try so hard to avoid: getting mired in the detail without figuring out the meaning and implications.

And so, for the final word on Reagan and race--and an example of what the historical method can bring to debates about the past's role in the present--I'll defer to another historian's take.

Working out...ideas about body image

One of the positive life changes I've made since moving to Philly has been starting a good work-out regimen. There's a gym around the corner from me, so it's easy to get there and come home to shower. I've been doing yoga class one night a week there, then cardio and weight-lifting as many days a week as I can fit in. Given that my father has always promoted going to the gym as the panacea for all that is bad in life, I had high expectations for my new habit.

I feel great when I leave the gym, but since I started working out, I've noticed an unhealthy preoccupation that I've never dealt with before: my weight. I had such a fast metabolism growing up that people used to ask whether I was anorexic. I could never understand why 1) girls would starve themselves to look like models and actresses or 2) why even models and actresses would want to be that thin--I knew that it was uncomfortable.

And now, for the first time, I am feeling what those girls must have felt. I expected to lose weight working out, although I didn't feel I needed to, but discovered after a month that I had actually gained a few pounds (possibly muscle, but this didn't console me) and weighed more than I ever had before. Suddenly I was noticing that all of my pants were tight. I began to scrutinize my body every time I looked in the mirror for where the fat was residing. Finally, I realized I needed to step back. I checked my body mass index online, and discovered that I was at the low end of normal weight for my size.

Given my awareness of how the media feeds girls' unhealthy body image, I have to admit that I was a bit surprised that I had bought into it. In high school, I boycotted stores whose ads I found distasteful in this way--this Bebe ad was one of the all-time worst. Things haven't improved since then. Magazines and blogs today treat cellulite, which one blog notes "effects 90% of women," as if it were a disease, and this recent blog post is an utterly tasteless example of that.

Where does this all leave me? I can't wipe out all of the negative associations I have with fat, but I can keep in mind where they're coming from. As an academic, I spend a lot of my time thinking about how culture shapes people's ideas, so maybe it's time I think about that in relation to myself.

Want to learn more about media and body image? Check out www.about-face.org.

Ugliness and the city

The results are in, and Philly has the ugliest people out of 25 American cities in a CNN/Travel and Leisure poll. Second ugliest? Washington, D.C. Apparently I've been hanging out in the wrong cities if I'm looking for the beautiful people. Philly also ranks 23rd for a category called "People (overall)." What exactly this means I'm not really sure. How can you possibly rank a city's population as a monolithic whole anyway?

Beyond the rather laughable methodology of this study (the rankings are based on people who have visited the city, but it doesn't appear that they asked how recently that visit was), I wonder if it's even possible to consider a city as one place in the way this study does. West Philly is vastly different from Center City, which in turn has little in common with South Philly. Tourist areas of a city are one thing, but large cities in America are so diverse--and, in turn, segregated--that it's often hard to make generalizations.

A kind of disturbing post on Gawker (a NYC blog) basically argued that what makes a city ugly is how many poor people live there. Wow. Another blogger suggests that people are just prejudiced towards blonds and Philly doesn't have enough. Maybe it's all the time I spend doing criticism for school, but I think this study should be taken with a giant spoonful of salt.

Why do history?

Pretty much since I started college, I've been concerned about doing something that mattered. Maybe it was because 9/11 happened my second week in college, or because many of my friends went into politics, advocacy work, or teaching, but whatever the reason, I've always been uneasy about being in the ivory tower. It doesn't help that the usual response from people when they hear I'm going for a PhD in history is some variation on a sarcastic "wow, that's useful..."

Last week, at the annual American Studies Association conference (held, conveniently enough, in Philadelphia), I attended a panel about the role of American Studies in informing public policy. There was clearly a lot of interest in the topic, because the room was so packed that people were standing the doorway (and believe me, this is not common at this kind of conference!). What emerged from what all of the scholars there were saying was that studying the past doesn't have to create analogies, but rather possibilities, for the present. Possibilities of other ways of doing things based on how we have done things in the past.

GW named one of its new dorms Ivory Tower, embodying the concept of the detached university (particularly apt here, since this was built over the neighborhood's objections)

To be honest, I'd never really thought about it that way. Certain topics lend themselves to this approach better than others: one scholar on immigration explained how her research shows past laws and policies that have been abandoned but could be useful today. An expert from a think tank explained that he reads articles by historians looking for answers to questions he approaches today when advising lobbyists. I asked about what a scholar who doesn't work on something that's currently a hot topic can do, and they insisted that being an activist can be an important role for somebody already trained in critical thinking and formulating arguments. True, but less compelling, I think.

Then I read, at a professor's suggestion, the incoming president of Harvard's inaugural address. The new president there, Drew Faust, is an historian. She echoed the concerns of a lot of historians I've talked to in school this year who worry about "presentism," or trying too hard to make historical research respond to present questions (although I think this is different from the possibility suggested by the panel about looking to the past for ideas--they weren't suggesting that the past try to answer current questions). Here's her answer to why we study fields like history and classics:

"We pursue them in part 'for their own sake,' because they define what has over centuries made us human, not because they can enhance our global competitiveness. We pursue them because they offer us as individuals and as societies a depth and breadth of vision we cannot find in the inevitably myopic present. We pursue them too because just as we need food and shelter to survive, just as we need jobs and seek education to better our lot, so too we as human beings search for meaning. We strive to understand who we are, where we came from, where we are going and why."

I guess her "depth and breadth of vision" is kind of like the panel's idea of alternative possibilities. I'll agree that the pursuit of knowledge is part of what makes us human, but as much as I know I'm in this for a search for meaning, that is a selfish pursuit. A lot of people in the ivory tower are appeased by the noble nature of the pursuit, but I will continue to stubbornly insist that there should be something more.

Strolling to the market

Last weekend, I walked down to the Italian Market via South Street. Most people think of this street as it is on the eastern end of it--an alternative, edgy bordering on scuzzy, street lined with bars. But the middle section of the street seems to be in transition. There are cute cafes and boarded up houses, ethnic restaurants and outsider art. The art scene--and an agent of that transition--on the street is dominated by an abandoned lot that has been turned into a bricolage of ceramics, glass, iron, and mirrors. I use the word "bricolage" here because it's how the artist, Isaiah Zagar, positions himself; he got the idea to do this sort of art when he saw similar work sharing walls at MoMA with Picasso and Gaudi.

Zagar began transforming empty lots and walls with his inventive work in the late 1960s, when South Street was slated to be ripped out to build an expressway. After that idea was scrapped and the real estate became more valuable, Zagar had to launch a campaign to save his grandest creation, the magic garden (the site refers to gardens, but there's one main garden, which is where my photos are from). It was closed when I walked by, but this creation is an entire three-dimensional wonderland of his mosaic work. His work is scattered through-out the neighborhood, and while it may not end up in a museum, it definitely causes people to stop, look, and marvel--as all great art should.

It was a nicer walk than I expected down to the market, and the first task there was to get lunch. I had an unbelievable panini at Di Bruno brothers and split a risotto ball (arancini) with Anne (the pic is her artistry; check out her photos).

We were so full it we passed by a gelato cart and continued shopping. We found a great pasta factory where we both bought ravioli and fresh-cut pasta. And then, for a finale, we discovered Isgro's pastries. It was pretty tough deciding between the cookies, tarts, cupcakes, and other pastries, but we both settled on cannoli. It's usually not my favorite, but this was good enough to make me want to go back for more.

Top 5 reasons I may go broke in Philly...

Philadelphia is a great walking city, and the area where I live is full of shops, restaurants, and bars. The only problem is that it's far too easy to reach destinations where I am almost certain to spend money. Here are my top 5 thus far:
1. Di Bruno Bros--fancy cheeses and pastries, prepared stuff, and cupcakes with towers of icing. A cheese obsession can be very dangerous when the stuff goes for around $20/lb.
2. Gap--not one, but two, nearby, plus an outlet. Especially bad.
3. Anthropologie--not that I can afford most of the stuff, but it has a very large sale selection with awesome tops. And it's in a cool historic building.
4. Capogiro--a gelato place with $4.50/bowl gelato in different flavors every single day
5. Italian Market--everything is cheap but it all adds up...lunch at a cafe, ravioli from the pasta factory, pastries from Isgro's, produce at the stands...and I haven't even tried the Mexican places in the neighborhood yet.

Boating into history

The Schuykill River may not be particularly scenic, but I had an enjoyable boat tour on it yesterday that started off from right near where I live. The Schuykill River Development Corporation has been working hard to create trails along the river and get people out on boat rides. For at least the past 100 years, the river's banks were inaccessible because factories blocked access. Today, though, this non-profit is buying up land to return to public use. Much of the trip south on the river was past wooded banks with the factories just behind, some awaiting conversion into condos.

The boat trip ended at Bartram's Garden, the estate of early American botanist John Bartram. He planted the nation's first botanic garden. He and his son, William Bartram, traveled around the country collecting and cataloging plants (William's book on his travels apparently inspired generations of naturalists and romantics, from Thoreau to John Muir). The elder Bartram built the house on this site himself; apparently he was a stonemason in addition to being a farmer and a botanist. The house is kind of quirky, with oddly-shaped staircases and rooms, cabinets built into corners, and the kitchen just off the front entrance (at this time, the kitchen was generally in a separate structure because of the fire hazard).


The gardens themselves are small, with just a couple of plots still being cultivated today. It would ordinarily be a very peaceful spot, but a wedding at the adjoining picnic pavilion was blasting rap music--hardly the right backdrop for this setting. It's hard to soak in the history of a place when the 21st century is drowning out the birdsongs. Check out a few more pics on my Flickr stream.

Remembering 9/11

I was surprised to go online this morning and realize that I'd forgotten that today was 9/11. In past years, I've anticipated the approach of the anniversary of the attacks with nervousness--I was always scared to be in downtown DC, worried that Something would happen. This year, living in a new city, I had to make myself stop and remember what happened that day.

It made me realize that, for all of the instances I'm always searching out to explain the relevance of history, this day is an achingly clear example of a case where remembering the past matters. I watched an interview this morning with twin girls born on 9/11/01, and the reporter asked if they knew what happened the day they were born. One of the girls sighed in exasperation and said, "Yes, some planes flew into buildings." Is this all that the next generation will remember of this day? How, then, will they make sense of what has happened since?

Admittedly, Pearl Harbor can never have the resonance for me that it did for my grandparents. But the difference with 9/11 is that rather than having to transfer collective memories to archives after the fact, reactions in the moment were preserved through online archives. It's an expansive multimedia repository--the official one for the Smithsonian, in fact--that historians long into the future will use to tell the story of that day. And, hopefully, it's a story we'll each retell every year, reminding us of the way history carries on into the present.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder...of the DC metro

Right before I moved up to Philly, the DC metro seemed like the last transit system I'd want to keep using, as a series of small fires closed down stations two days in a row. For that matter, I had come to dread my commute to and from work in DC, because at least once a week there would be some sort of mess. But then...I came to Philadelphia.

Philadelphia's public transit system, SEPTA, is the fifth largest in the country, but it's woefully inadequate and unreliable. There are blogs devoted to SEPTA's awfulness--riders can relate bad experiences at SEPTA Watch or print out signs from SeptaMadeBetter to post at transit stops because there are barely any official ones. It seems that the main problem is lack of funding, but I also get the sense that it's just poorly run. And don't get me started on PATCO, which I take to get out to New Jersey occasionally.

Granted, the bus I need to get to campus comes often enough, but then I have the joy of paying for my ten minute ride with a $1.30 token. Seriously, your choices are a monthly pass, paying $2 in exact change, or tokens. Finding a place to buy said tokens, then having to pay in cash and getting your change in dimes, is also lots of fun.

Oh, DC metro, how I miss you!

Ben Franklin was here

Well...it's not the most high-minded connection to history, but it's pretty funny that the National Park Service marked where Ben Franklin went to the bathroom. Privy pits are actually quite useful to archaeologists, because people threw away all sorts of trash into them--often pipes, broken pottery, or cooking leftovers. This privy is located right behind Franklin's grandson's print shop on Market Street in Old City. Behind the shop is a courtyard with two metal frames outlining where Franklin's house and shop would have been. How did archaeologists know this was the privy? Usually, by slight gradations in soil color that are revealed as they dig--and by all of the trash.

The remains of a 3-year dig at the site of the near-by National Constitution Center are being sorted around the corner from here at the Independence Living History Center. The large block where the museum is now located was once a busy neighborhood with a mix of socioeconomic classes and even races. The pottery that's being pieced together at the Center is indicative of this--some tables are full of plain, chunky bowls, while others have delicate blue and white (I assume delftware) tea cups.

My visit to Old City also included a stop at the Arch Street Meeting House, a walk through Elfreth's Alley and talks with some reenactors and storytellers. There's a surprisingly large area of 18th-century buildings that are still around, some of which are now private homes or offices. I also managed to make a stop for lunch at a Philly cheesesteak place called Campo's Deli (check out their website, there is actually a video of the making of their sandwiches). I got an enormous vegetarian wrap then headed toward home--all of this, without getting lost!

Exploring Center City

Today I decided to explore the city a bit by walking east through Center City (I live at the west edge of the neighborhood). As an end point for my walk, I planned to go to the Curtis Center to see a mosaic recreation of a Maxfield Parrish design that I'd been wanting to see for years. Parrish, trained here in Philadelphia in the early twentieth century, has been one of my favorite artists for years. But more about Parrish later.

I began my walk in Rittenhouse Square, which was designated as a park in William Penn's plan for the city in 1682. The square was full of people and dogs, as were all of the cafes surrounding it. I crossed the city on Sansom and Walnut streets, which run parallel to each other, to try to get a sense of things. At first, I was passing fancy boutiques and cafes, but as I got closer to Broad Street, it became a little run down with a smattering of cool places starting to open.

The neighborhood went through two quick shifts before I got to the Curtis Center--first through the glbt neighborhood (which I really only realized because the street signs had a rainbow border on the bottom), and then through the campus of a medical school. When I reached the Curtis Center, I was surprised to find that it was an office building. I had some trouble finding even a sign for the mosaic, but finally I saw an arrow pointing towards the "Tiffany mosaic." I hadn't realized that this had been a collaboration between Parrish and Louis Comfort Tiffany.Titled "Dream Garden," Parrish and Tiffany's work is a dreamy landscape spanning nearly 50 feet in one of Center's lobbies. All of the usual elements of Parrish's landscapes are here--grand, orange and mauve mountains, a vivid blue sky, spindly trees, and overflowing flowers (painted from those in his own garden). Tiffany used different textures of glass for the flowers, as you can see in this photo (click on it to zoom in).I realized as I left the building that I was right across from Independence Hall, so I'd walked most of the way across the city in not much time. I took a different route back so that I could get water ice on the way home (I'd looked up the location online, I can't help the ice cream obsession). There were blocks that were charming, and others so surrounded in tall buildings and dinginess that I felt as if I were in New York City. At one corner, I passed a mural called Philadelphia Muses--I discovered the title through the Mural Arts Program's online database, which lets you search the city's many murals by location.This is a city where the mood seems to change every few blocks, some streets are as narrow as sidewalks, and early 19th century buildings abound. Nothing like DC--which means I have a lot more to learn and explore.

Philadelphia Museum of Art, in person and online

After three days in Philadelphia, I was already eager to get to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I hadn't been there for at least 15 years, so I didn't remember much of anything about it. I discovered a bus that runs up there from right near my place. When I got there, I was distracted at first by all of the people imitating Rocky on the museum steps (there's even a recent book chronicling the people who do this). But then I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the building.

My pre-visit browse of the museum website didn't show any images of the building, which seems incredible after being confronted with the sheer mass and lines of the place. It's a fabulous setting for art, with classical architecture and high ceilings. The website, sans images, explains that the building "is considered one of the crowning achievements of the 'city beautiful' movement in architecture in the early part of the twentieth century." The way it perches at the end of a long avenue with a view down to City Hall and the downtown is breathtaking (I forgot my camera, but grabbed this pic from Britannica.com).

The place seems huge, but I was able to wander through 3 of the 4 major installations in 2 hours to get a sense of what I wanted to come back to see. The strength of the museum's collection is clearly the full-room installations from around the world, including a medieval cloister, a Japanese tea house, and British drawing rooms. The more traditional collections, though, I found a bit lacking. The early American painting collection was just okay, with the exception of a room of Eakins paintings (which aren't really my thing), and the European paintings in the 16th-19th century wing weren't overly impressive. I'm hoping that the one wing I missed--the 20th century European and American wing--has some show-stoppers.

Criticisms aside, I feel like I have a lot left to explore, both in person and online. The website has lets you see what is on display in each gallery, and has tours available as podcasts to download, so you don't have to pay for the audio guide. As you explore online, you can listen to an audio stop when you get to an object's web page, so you can tour from home, too. You can also add your own tags to any object in the collection online, which in the web 2.0 world is called "social tagging" or "folksonomy." It's a big step for a museum to let visitors classify things instead of curators, so I'll be curious to see how it plays out (the government is even funding a big experiment in this area called Steve).

After a weekend of moving and unpacking, I've gotten most of my stuff in order in the new apartment. Fortunately, I had diagrammed how the furniture would fit in my bedroom, because it's a very small space. All of the furniture is packed in there--particularly my bed, which is wedged between the desk and the chest of drawers. As you can tell from the pic, it actually turned out looking quite nice (although I haven't hung the artwork yet).



And yes, that's a fan in the left corner--the apartment doesn't have central AC. That's not really surprising, considering it's in a building constructed in 1856. That's fairly old by DC standards, but Philadelphia had already been around for over 150 years. While it was once America's largest city--and the second largest in the British empire after London--New York had already surpassed it by the 1850's. So, what was happening in Philadelphia at that time? Apparently, it remained the industrial center of the country with a focus on textiles.

The drive into the city from the south is still surrounded by factories and refineries, but in my new neighborhood, it's mostly boutiques and restaurants with the occasional high rise apartment building. Being an older city, the streets are very narrow in places--it kind of reminds me of Boston. I've been able to do all of my errands so far within a few blocks' walk from here, but I need to try to figure out the public transportation soon!

The Ever-Prescient Jefferson

As an article in this month's issue of the online history journal Common-place explains, good old TJ foresaw the danger of burgeoning private fortunes. In "Private Wealth, Public Influence:
The Jeffersonian tradition and American philanthropy," the author explains that Jefferson believed in breaking up private fortunes to insure that America didn't grow its own aristocracy. It was a radical idea both then and now. But it hadn't occurred to me before that this could extend to philanthropic foundations.

The author of the piece, Johann Neem, argues that foundations like Bill Gates'—no matter how noble its aims—perhaps wield too much power because of the massive amounts of money they control. Is this money even rightly theirs? Neem tells the story of a populist Democrat in the early 20th century who argued that foundations let the wealthy maintain control of huge sums of money for nebulous purposes. This populist contended that John D. Rockefeller's fortune came from "the exploitation of American workers" and truly belongs "to the American people."

It's quite reminiscent of the recent WaPo article about Catherine Reynolds, who made a fortune off of student loans through a "non-profit" organization. While it's laudable that she gives large sums of money to charity, why not give some money back to the students? As things stand now, the money she made off of students in debt is funding an enormous addition to the Kennedy Center.

Tuition and fees for next year at many private schools will top $35,000, and while as a PhD student I won't be paying that, many other students will. Paying for a college education has become a huge concern for many American families, but I haven't noticed many private foundations directing their attention at this problem. That's because, as Jefferson realized, such foundations aren't accountable to the public. The government--to some extent, although not much lately--is the entity accountable. Maybe that's where the money should be.

I'm not sure how Jefferson intended to break up private fortunes, but I agree with Neem's suggestion that higher taxes on the wealthy are a good start. Since that's not on the horizon, hopefully Congress's latest bill to help out will survive.

To Market, To Market

This Saturday, I visited DC's Eastern Market. It was perfect weather for a walk around Capitol Hill and a morning of shopping outdoors. I wanted to make sure to visit this month, though, because the market has been suffering since its historic 1873 building had a terrible fire on April 30th. It's one of the places in DC that I'll miss most when I move.

Going to a public market has an appeal to it that a shopping mall will never capture. In some markets, being outdoors is one part of the allure, but so is interacting directly with the people who make, grow, or at least select their own merchandise. It also feels like a bit of a step back in time, since people have been selling goods this way for centuries.

Two of my favorite places from past visits to Philly are historic public markets. The city's Italian market claims to be "the oldest and largest working outdoor market in the United States," and I'm excited to be able to go there more often. Reading Terminal Market is a bit closer to where I'll be living and is historic in its own right; it apparently evolved out of an outdoor mess of stalls along what became Market Street.

I discovered that a fellow GW American Studies program alum has published a book called Public Markets and Civic Culture in Nineteenth-Century America that explores how markets were key to the development of shared community values. The book focuses on New York and Philadelphia, but I think the recent fire at Eastern Market has demonstrated how central the space was to the community here in DC.

The community isn't just about the people that come to the markets; it's about the vendors interacting with their customers. The Slow Food movement (part of which is focused on buying local) calls this "linking producers and co-producers." I think I'll go eat some of the cherries I "co-produced" right now, in fact.

Moving Costs

In a world in which it seems like most of the stuff we're "moving" and "storing" is virtual (files, digital photos, e-mails, etc.), I forget how difficult and expensive it is to move physical objects. As objects for the big show at my museum are being moved in with painstaking care, I'm making my own moving plans. It turns out that moving a tiny studio apartment worth of furniture is a fortune. Having never moved more than a few miles, I had no idea how much places charge to take things longer distances.

It's hard to imagine, then, what it costs to move the art objects arriving at the museum from England, Brazil, India, Japan, Portugal, China...In this case, each collection sending any pieces send a courier, basically a trained escort, to make sure the piece arrives and is installed safely. There are stipulations in the loan contracts for some pieces that say what kind of light should be used, what kind of case the object should be in, sometimes even how close by a guard needs to be.

So, I suppose in contrast, my own move sounds fairly tame. No couriers for my couch, and no installation requirements for my architectural salvage artwork.

Entering the blogosphere

After 10 years of doing web work, I'm making the leap to Web 2.0: I'm entering the blogosphere. The occasion: my upcoming return to graduate school. For the first time in my life, I'll be living outside of the beltway. It's off to the city of brotherly love, Philadelphia, for a history Ph.D. Hence the title of this blog.

There are a few reasons I decided a blog would be appropriate, besides just keeping up with the times. I've been following the scattered blogs out there about academia, particularly those that address technology, and I'd like to become part of that dialogue. So, I'll be writing about both my interests in American history and in technology. Also, as I leave D.C., I want to document life in Philly.

George Washington in the news

Retired Gen. George Washington Criticizes Bush's Handling Of Iraq War

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Revolutionary War veteran noted that while Hussein was a tyrant, that alone did not justify a "conflict that seems without design or end."

Good old George Washington made a couple of headlines this week. The first, of course, is a farce, but a very clever one. I'm kind of surprised that they didn't bring out more clearly Washington's isolationist view of foreign policy. In his farewell address, he said:

"The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop...If we remain one people under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance..."

Washington also made the news up in my home-to-be of Philadelphia. Growing up in Washington, D.C., I always thought of Washington's home as Mount Vernon. But he also lived in Philadelphia when the capital was located there, and apparently the National Park Service is excavating his home. Archaeologists have found "an underground passageway where slaves slipped in and out of the main house, so they wouldn't be seen by Washington's guests." Apparently Adams also lived in this house, and I have to wonder what he would have thought of having slave quarters in his residence. The website for the site has a live webcam of the dig plus a lot of information on slavery at the house.