Monthly Archives: April 2020

Historical Hypocrisy

books, history,

Some American history writers seem unwilling to take on the racist, violent events and attitudes of our shared past. Unless the topic directly relates to the atrocities and the people impacted by them, the writers either ignore them or pay some kind of lip service. I think we can celebrate ingenuity and innovation without sacrificing the often pretty terrible truth about how America became and continues to become the country it is.

Philbrick takes time out from recounting the first battles of the Revolutionary War to point out the essential hypocrisy and single minded fanaticism of the colonists. Long after the war was over, one of the militiamen stated his reason for fighting very simply: “We always had been free, and we meant to be free always” (p. 121). Philbrick does not let that statement simply go by without comment:

But to say that a love of democratic ideals had inspired these country people to take up arms against the regular is to misrepresent the reality of the revolutionary movement. Freedom was for these militiamen a very relative term. As for their Puritan ancestors, it applied only to those who were just like them. Enslaved African Americans, Indians, women, Catholics, and especially British loyalists were not worthy of the same freedoms they enjoyed. It did not seem a contradiction to these men that standing among them that night was the thirty-four-year-old enslaved African American Prince Estabrook, owned by town selectman and justice of the peace Benjamin Estabrook (p. 121).

He goes on to describe the sometimes brutal suppression of loyalists in Massachusetts. Tar and feathering was a popular punishment, and early in the book, Philbrick describes one such attack with excruciating detail so we understand the horror. Later, he only has to mention that it was administered to make my skin crawl.

I remember when, during her husband’s first Presidential campaign, Michelle Obama made a comment about being really proud of her country for the first time. Not surprisingly, she was widely criticized. But from its beginnings, the country that emphasized freedom for all not only left lots of people out, but did so in horrible, dehumanizing ways.

It is not without a touch of irony that Philbrick ends the section about the small battle in Lexington in which Prince Estabrook took part by describing the aftermath:

Besides Pitcairn’s twice-wounded horse and two soldiers who had received minor injuries, all the casualties had been sufferwd by the provincials, with eight dead and ten wounded, included Prince Estabrook, who became the first African American casualty of the Revo;ution since the death of the black sailor Crispus Attacks at the Boston Massacre (p. 128).

 

Parallels in History

history

Thoughts about reading Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution by Nathaniel Philbrick

Disclaimer: I am not a trained historian nor a Constitutional scholar. I know a bit about American history, mostly from the perspective of writers and filmmakers like Ken Burns, David McCullough, and Nathaniel Philbrick. They are, first and foremost, storytellers, providing context as needed but always putting the people first. I like reading history because there are often parallels with our own time, despite differences in cultures, countries, and ideologies.

For example, in Bunker Hill, Nathaniel Philbrick takes a detailed look at the battle that began the Revolutionary War. He begins with the Boston Tea Party with flashbacks to the Boston Massacre. He tells the story of patriots and loyalists centered on the city of Boston. In the preface, he describes Boston as “the true hero of the story.”

Bostonians, according to Philbrick, had a sense of themselves as an “autonomous enclave” that did not have to follow dictates from England, a feeling that originated with the first Puritan settlers in 1630.  During King Phillips’ War in 1676, John Leverett, the governor of Massachusetts, essentially declared independence to a British agent, saying the King could enlarge their liberties but not retract them. Philbrick writes, “A hundred years before the Declaration of Independence, the governor of Massachusetts boldly insisted that the laws enacted by the colony’s legislature superseded those of even Parliament” (p. 5).

Does that sound familiar? Substitute the federal government for Parliament, and we are suddenly firmly in 2020 as the federal and state governments debate their relationships in terms of the pandemic. This article about the possibility of the Department of Justice supporting legal action against state governors whose stay-at-home orders seem excessive shows the conflict between the federal and state governments. And states have to work with their counties. It is these kinds of conflicts that led to the Civil War.

How do we help students see these connections? How does this become the curriculum?

 

 

 

 

What I’ve Been Doing Besides Teleconferencing

creativity, Making, playing, , ,

One of my work-from-home rituals is to stop working at noon on Fridays. I am happy to take a few hours on Saturday or Sunday to do a few things if it means being able to get away from work.

South Porch GardenToday, I spent time in the garden. While my husband grows the vegetables, I am the flower gardener. We have a formal garden near the house, just outside the south porch. It had gotten overgrown in the past year as my arthritis kept me from doing the work of weeding and mulching. With my new hip in place, I am back to battling weeds and close to being ready to lay down the mulch. My husband grew plants for me from seed, and I transplanted borage and milkweed thistle.

Cinnamon Raisin Sourdough BreadI’ve also been baking from scratch. I like to bake but had taken to using mixes, kind of semi-homemade. But a friend gave me sourdough starter and then I turned some of it into a whole wheat starter and now I am baking at least twice a week. Yesterday, I just baked with the “discard” from the sourdough, that is, the stuff I wasn’t going to keep after a fed a smaller amount of the starter to keep it alive for next week. If you don’t, you end up with the starter that ate San Francisco, which is almost the plot of Robin Sloan’s Sourdough. I had enough to make Cinnamon Raisin Sourdough Bread and some crackers using the outlines of a recipe from a baker on Twitter. I went for rustic and “artisinal” for the crackers. The bread was lovely toasted with butter this morning. And the crackers are a little thick but they have a satisfying crunch. I used some flavored salts that we received as a holiday gift along with a bit of pepper.

Pork Loin with Vegies and SauerkrautFinally, I’ve been cooking. Years of watching Food TV and the Great British Baking Challenge have given me a foundation for putting meals together. I put a piece of pork in the crock pot with carrots, onions, potatoes and apples. I layered in our first experiment with sauerkraut and was rewarded with that tangy bite. The picture is pre-cooking: once it cooks away for hours, it doesn’t like quite as pretty but it tastes delicious!

Begin Again

blogging, Education, thinking out loud, ,
Solomon's Seal and Dragonflies
A favorite spot in my spring garden

This blog post is inspired by two people. Tim Stahmer has been blogging consistently since the early naughts. I’ve had blogs setup as long as he has, but I never got into the rhythm. But, like many of us, he found himself feeling unsettled in this era of the unknown and it impacted his writing, partly because he wasn’t sure what to say.

Jennifer Orr, meanwhile, has been giving us all a glimpse into the world of teachers right now. As always, her courage to share her deepest fears and griefs and joys inspires me.

I started the year with good intentions and enjoyed blogging in January, partly because I gave myself permission to write about whatever I wanted. I posted a few thoughts early on in the crisis but, like Tim, I ran out of energy and wondered what I had to share.

I admire Jen’s courage to speak her truth. Through her eyes, we also see the lives of her students and their families. And, she reminds us that the wires and switches are about connecting people and supporting community. We can fix the technology problems, but there is an emotional toll that will be harder to repair. We need more teachers to tell their stories all the time but never more so than now.

So, to Tim’s question, what can I say? I think I’m going back to my January philosophy and writing about what comes to mind. I am back to baking regularly with two different sourdough starters. My flower gardens are coming together and there are lots of lessons to learn while weeding. Meanwhile, my husband is putting in extra tomato, squash, zucchini and cucumber plants this year,  thinking that our local community, a food desert, will benefit from fresh produce this summer. I will be channeling my grandmothers as I pickle, can, ferment and freeze. I’m back to reading after struggling with concentration.

For now, I’ll end with a potentially helpful resource for those who are struggling with connectivity. The Commonwealth Coalition, of which VSTE is a proud member, has created a wifi hotspot map for the state:

I like that one near me is at Moores Swamp Church. But it is a picture of inequity as well. Rural folks expect to drive longer distances for services but, at this point in time, Internet is like electricity. It needs to come directly to the house.