The Grand Tour of Random Cities

There is irony in the fact that a city founded by the most hard-core of the Puritans is now one of the least law-abiding places in the country. As the train enters the city, a decrepit brick building towering over the ruins of another building has a message in graffiti written across it: "Detox the Ghetto." And on the city's tourism website, the changing advertisements on the right of the page are for financial rewards for turning in guns or illegal dumpers, a crime hotline, and a neighborhood renewal group.

Newark, New Jersey, may have dropped from the most dangerous to the 20th most dangerous city in America, but it is far from feeling like an alive and healthy place. It was my latest stop in what could be called my "Grand Tour of Random Cities." In my travels in the past few years, I've gone to places that are largely off the tourist map--East Lansing, Michigan; St. Louis; Springfield, Illinois; Providence; Richmond; Columbus, Ohio; Baltimore; and now, Newark. Each of these cities has its merits, but they are all places that have struck me as still recovering from the near-death experience of white flight and urban decay in recent decades.

I only saw a small pocket of Newark during my visit to the New Jersey Historical Society, but what I found most creepy there--as in Richmond, St. Louis, and to some extent in Baltimore--was the lack of people out in the streets. Broad, congested city streets run through block after block of silent, cold buildings and the people are largely sealed inside their cars. The historical society is in one of the few remaining 19th century buildings in this part of Newark, and as I sat in the 5th floor library, the whole building occasionally shook as a trolley rattled past.

In a city like Newark, the past feels fragile. To walk through the empty streets of a half-dead city in order to read the papers of its earlier inhabitants, inhabitants who lived there when the city was growing and thriving, is in some ways a depressing endeavor. I feel like a voyeur who is peering into the city's past without contributing to its future. Unless, that is, cities like these can figure out--as Washington, Boston, or Charleston have--that their history is what could build their future.

"The Most Unconquerable Place on Earth"

I was talking with a friend today about Obama's decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Somehow I just cannot work up the energy to be angry, because it seems more laughable than anything. Really, if Genghis Khan couldn't conquer this place, what makes us think that we can? Maybe tanks, drones and machine guns aren't such game-changers after all. And perhaps Obama should have had an historian or two--or John Oliver--join his team to decide a course of action in Afghanistan.

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Party Politics

I have been frustrated the past few weeks by the same phenomenon in two different eras: the twisted convulsions of politicians trying to fit into our two-party system. My argument about the stalled health care debate in the Senate hinges on this fact: the Democrats are such a diverse party that the idea of a Democratic super majority is really meaningless. There are two subparties: the DINO's (Democrats In Name Only) from conservative states, and the Progressives. The third entity, mostly left out of the argument, is the Republican party, which is now almost wholly Southern and right-wing because of having bled moderates in the past few elections. At any rate, all of this means there are three factions with totally different interests, each accusing the other of heading the country into ruin.

How little things have changed...in the US history survey course I'm TA'ing, we've been covering the Second Party System in the past few weeks. From the fall of Federalists to the rise of Democrats and Whigs, to the fall of Whigs and rise of Republicans, plus those other pesky third parties thrown in, it's almost impossible to follow. The messiness of it does explain, though, why nobody could ever make any real progress on dealing with slavery. And, like today, politicians on both sides were accusing each other of destroying America. But the messiness is also frustratingly complicated to grasp.

It occurred to me that since we do know, in the case of the 19th century, the full trajectory of the party system, a diagram would be helpful to explain it. Surely somebody had created such a thing...and, thanks to Google, I found this amazing diagram courtesy of the UNC education school:

(follow the link to see a copy big enough to read)

Not that this whole jumble of political changes could ever be crystal-clear, but I think the diagram helps quite a bit. Historians are often loath to use images for explanations, preferring the written or spoken word. I wonder if part of our graduate school training should be in the use of images to tell historical stories and illustrate concepts; sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words (or a 50-minute lecture).

Wrapping up summer in Philly

The past week has been strangely typical here for me: reading, cooking with finds from the farmers' market, and wonderfully random things going on in Rittenhouse Square. So, here's my week in pics:

I got fresh mozzarella and tomatoes from the Headhouse Square farmer's market, then picked up some basil at the produce market near my apartment. So, of course, I had to make a caprese salad.









On Thursday morning, I awoke to the sound of generators outside my apartment. I was pretty surprised to find out all the noise was from actors' trailers, parked right below my window. Paul Rudd and Jack Nicholson were filming a scene just around the corner, and as I stood outside watching the action each of them walked right past me. Sadly, I didn't get the pic--this is Rudd in Fitler Square from the arts review blog http://jimruttersreviews.blogspot.com/.




















And then, to top off the week, there were the nude bikers. I only captured the last few stragglers here; it was actually a huge mass of people, all in various levels of undress. The bikers were apparently trying to get across a number of messages--bicycle safety on city streets, carbon-free transportation, and body image awareness. What came through most clearly was that they and the crowds watching were having a great time.

Defining terms, then and now

Here's a vintage NY Times story during the debates over forming Medicare that sounds oh so familiar...

Kennedy and Students Shout About Medicine
WASHINGTON, Nov. 30 [1960] (UPI)--President-elect John F. Kennedy and a group of Georgetown University medical students had a brief debate tonight on socialized medicine.

The students saw Senator Kennedy emerging from Georgetown Hospital after visiting his wife and shouted: "Keep out socialized medicine!"

Just before he stepped into his car, Senator Kennedy looked over the top and shouted back:
"I'm for medical care for the aged and you're against socialized medicine * * * * and there is no disagreement. It's a matter of definition."

Nearly fifty years later, that "matter of definition" is still proving a sticking point in the healthcare debates. But I think that the key underlying question then and now remains whether health care is a human right, and, if so, that means the government should provide it for those in need.

One of the conservative talking heads pointed out that if you check the Constitution, you won't see a right to health care. While that argument is so ridiculous as to be laughable--I never noticed one to public education, to voting for women or blacks, or other rights we now consider inviolable--it does point to the fact that what we consider to be an inalienable human right changes over time. That said, I have trouble seeing how health care could be a privilege or a commodity and not a right.

And so maybe it all really is about definitions--what we define as a human right, how we define a "public option," and what we mean by "socialized medicine" or a "government take-over." It seems likely that those who win in the war of definitions for this historical moment will win this round of the healthcare battle.

An "eye and heart-opening experience"?

That, at least, is what the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum advertises itself as. On my visit there last month, I could certainly see that such an experience was the goal. The museum is made up vignettes of Lincoln's life at particular moments, featuring realistic settings and wax figures. You do feel a bit as if you've stepped into his world, and that's a valuable experience that I'm sure could be eye-opening for many people. As for the emotional reaction, that is achieved in several places: wax figures of a slave couple being torn apart at a slave market, Lincoln at his ill son's bedside, and Lincoln's coffin in a large, elaborate room filled with silk flowers and the sounds of slow, sad music.

I buy the idea that history comes alive for people when they are engaged in this way, but I think a museum fails when it only appeals to the senses. I left this museum with a gut reaction rather than any new knowledge. There were very few original artifacts on display, which could have provided for a more visceral and less produced connection to the past. The museum labels were mostly short descriptions of stages in Lincoln's life rather than information connecting objects and history. Hopefully museums will adapt to cater to (as the early Americans I study would put it) both the head and the heart.

Check out a video showing what the museum is like at the museum's website.

SHEAR in the Land of Lincoln?

Perhaps it's one of the curiosities of being a historian that the study of the antebellum era (1830 to 1860) seems foreign to those who study the Early Republic (1780s-ish to 1830). Nonetheless, I and many of my colleagues felt out of place--or is it time?--attending the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic's conference in Springfield, Illinois, with an inevitable focus on Abraham Lincoln. I ventured to Springfield to present some of my early dissertation research and get feedback--which I did and felt went very nicely. But I also figured that I would enjoy the Lincoln theme a lot more by visiting the historic sites in town than by attending panels on topics that didn't interest me.

It was a good choice; the town's few historic sites are impressive. In two hours I was able to walk the whole town and see the Old State Capitol, the current Illinois Statehouse, and Lincoln's neighborhood. The latter two were both special surprises. In the case of the current state house, I was shocked to go inside and find the entire interior covered in marble. The slender dome soared above a round space decorated with scenes of Illinois history, reaching a height exceeding that of the U.S. Capitol building. The house and senate chambers had intricately painted ceilings and massive crystal chandeliers. It took two decades and $4.5 million to complete it--and so much trouble that some suggested abandoning the building and moving elsewhere.

From the statehouse it was a short walk to Lincoln's neighborhood. I thought I was only going to see his house; I didn't expect that four blocks of his neighborhood would be preserved as a National Park site. It is closed off to cars and unpaved, with tree-lined streets and a mix of freshly-painted wooden homes. There's a cell-phone tour, so you can hear about who lived in each house and what the Lincoln family's relation to each neighbor was. The house itself has been restored to its original appearance and, while large for Springfield in the 1850s, seems fairly small compared with the homes of the Washington, Jefferson, or Madison.


But what trip to Springfield, Illinois, would be complete without conservative, anti-health reform protesters? I was surprised to see a large group of people gathered outside one of the houses in Lincoln's neighborhood, milling around and half-heartedly holding up signs. It turned out that Senator Durbin's Springfield office is in the Shutt House, one block from Lincoln's. Mr. Shutt, it seems, supported Stephen Douglass instead of his neighbor in the 1860 election, so perhaps he would have approved of this scene of political disagreement.

You can see more pics from my trip on flickr. Next up: edutainment at the Lincoln museum.