Frederick Douglass's Sister, part 6

Ruth, however, had already been making plans of her own. In 1846, she became engaged to Perry Frank Adams, a free black laborer who had also been born in Talbot County, Maryland, and was then living in Springfield, Massachusetts. If she wrote to Douglass in England to tell him about the marriage, the letter did not reach him. The letter in which she asked him to provide “a light silk dress – a wedding dress” did.

Shocked and infuriated, Douglass responded, “This is strange—passing strange. Something I cannot understand or account for…” He counseled her against any match, writing, “Marriage is one act of our lives – once performed It cannot be undone…it may lend to a life of misery and wretchedness for which you alone must be responsible.” He demanded to know the identity of the intended groom, writing, “I should like to know something about your lover previous to your getting married. I think this much due to me.” He sulked at having not been consulted in the match. “If I were absolutely certain that you were on the brink of destruction I might warn you,” he wrote, “if you had asked my advice.” “Now, My Dear Harriet,” he chastised her, “this is not treating me well, it is not treating me as a sister ought to treat a brother.”*

His seemed to have temporarily forgotten his parting promise in that letter, “Remember you need never be out of Doors while I have a house to shelter myself and family,”** as their quarrel escalated over the ensuing months. In the next surviving letter, Douglass wrote, “I have done you a serious injustice…and hope to be forgiven for it.” Continuing, he referred to some harsh words that he had written to her in a “letter asking you to leave my house.” “You know me too well and too long,” he wrote, “to imagine that I could take pleasure in harshly hurting you – in whom I have so long trusted, and have loved as a true friend, and even as a sister.” He then asked her to remain in his home, but only if she wished to do so. “You are your own woman,” he wrote, “seek your own happiness.”*** Their quarrel apparently was not permanent. Ruth granted Douglass’s request to wait until he returned from England to marry. He, in turn, gave her a white wedding dress and stood beside her during the ceremony.****

Ruth's letters to Douglass have not survived, so her half of the quarrel escapes analysis. Douglass's complicated responses to Ruth's announcement of her engagement, on the other hand, provide one of the rare glimpses into Douglass's emotional life. Unlike the controlled rage that infuses his public writings power, his anger in these letters vascillates between the jealousy of a jilted admirer and the indignation of a slighted father as he struggles to find the appropriate means of rationalizing his reactions. Furthermore, his hostility toward the institution of marriage opens a space for provacative speculation on his own wedded bliss.

He interprets his relationship to Ruth as one of father to daughter, big brother to little sister, wise elder to naif. In other words, his responses indicate that he believed that he had a paternalist relationship with Ruth, an interpretation that she may not have shared. She had violated the agreement of that unspoken paternalism by agreeing to marry without consulting him, which in turn led to his escalating frustration that culminated in her expulsion from his house.

Herein lies the importance of this friendship in understanding Douglass [and my struggle to give this whole article some sort of theoretical framework or relevance]. How does his interpretation of this relationship compare with those of other women, and then to those of men, with whom he shared a bond? How does this relationship with this African American woman compare to the relationships that he shared with other African American women, and how do those compare with his relationships to white women, both as intimates and as activists? Did he, in fact, have a paternalist attitude toward women in general, or toward only particular women whom he did see as being in his care? Furthermore, if he did see gender relationships as inherently paternalist, how did he negotiate that very common attitude with his developing awareness and support of Woman's Rights? How did he, the Woman's Rights Man, reconcile his personal understanding of gender relations with his political position? These questions are not to condemn him, but rather to explore the difficult and frustrating work of making radical reforms when he was very much a participant, and a willing participant in many ways, of the gender system that he sought to reform.

Ruth, meanwhile, had her own life to negotiate; and her own life brought her into a very different circle of abolitionists than that of Douglass.

* FD to HB/RCA, London, England, 18 August 1846, Douglass Papers, DLC.
** Ibid.*
***FD to HB/RCA, Kensington, England, 31 January 1847, Douglass Papers, DLC.
****FD to HB/RCA, London, England, 18 August 1846, Douglass Papers, DLC; Coffee, “Lest We Forget,” AMH, NSH; “Adams’ Escape,” Norfolk Weekly News, 7 March 1894. A strip of the wedding dress is part of the Alyce McWilliams Hall Collection in the Nebraska State Historical Society.

I MUST Share

Today, I was having a conference with a student who is bright beyond the capabilities of a classroom. Maybe you know the sort? His mind is about ten steps ahead of any point in the discussion. He grasps twenty different ways of seeing a subject. He probably should be in grad school, but there is that whole pesky need for the bachelor's degree first. You can see his intelligence bursting out of his body in the way he moves and talks and walks.

He is too much for the other students, and capable of absorbing about a hundred times more information in about half the time...and my other students aren't anything to scoff at in that department, either, especially in this particular section. If you could serve the information to them like a meal, they would eat the thing whole, lick the flowers off of the plate, and ask for seconds before you could sit down yourself. They demand to know, to be given the tools to understand. He's too much, even for them.

As I recommended books for this particular student to read -- actually, not to read so much as to feed to his insatiable appetite for learning -- and he wrote down the titles and authors, he mentioned "Library of Congress, here I come." Not the public library, not the school's library, but the actual Library of Congress.

"Have you been there, to the Library of Congress?" I asked, thinking that I might have heard wrong.

"Yeah," he said, "I hang out there. That's my vice, my high, my drug. Good books."

He told me that his father, a fairly accomplished attorney, took him there when he was just a little boy. "The best books in the world are here," his dad said. When my student told me that, he spread his arms out and looked up, as if he were still that child, standing in the middle of that magnificent, golden cathedral of a reading room. "The best books in the world!" he said.

"We aren't close," the student added, "so I don't have that feeling for what my father's done, for what he's accomplished; but I have that."

So here is a young man who goes to the Library of Congress to sit down and read books. I almost wept for joy.

These are my students.

Frederick Douglass's Sister, part 5

In September 1844, Douglass first met Ruth at an anti-slavery gathering in West Chester. He at first mistook her for his youngest sister, Harriet, who had been born in 1825 and whom he had not seen since he left Talbot County.* After Douglass and Ruth sorted through his mistake, Douglass invited her to live with his family in Lynn, Massachusetts, where she would assume the identity of his sister and accepted the name “Harriet” to varying degrees for the next two decades. Just as importantly, for the time that she lived in the Douglass household, the family accepted her. Harriet, instead, became “Dear Sister” to both Frederick and Anna Douglass, and “friend” and “Aunt” to their daughter Rosetta.

Both her color and her domestic skills may have particularly endeared Ruth to Anna Murray Douglass. Anna, caring for a family of three small children while also taking in piecework for the local shoe factories, would have another set of hands around the house with Ruth. Moreover, she and Ruth had the shared experience of being southern black women in a predominantly white northern town. Indeed, Ruth was one of the few black female companions that Anna had during her marriage to Douglass, who grew closer to white middle-class abolitionists and who inflicted two of his own white female companions on his wife as semi-permanent house guests. **

The affection that both Anna and Frederick felt for Harriet allowed her to mediate between the couple as their estrangement grew during this period when his career took him more frequently and further away from home with little financial recompense. Anna chose not to make literacy a priority in her life, thus the periods of separation between husband and wife often required an intermediary to read his letters to Anna and to dictate hers to him. While Douglass traveled in Ireland and England, Ruth took on this role. Douglass specifically asked her to explain to Anna his reasons for remaining so long from his home while he traveled in Europe, and passed along messages to Anna through Ruth. Douglass himself seemed content that the living situation would continue indefinitely if not permanently. When considering immigrating to England during his visit in 1846, he asked her, “what do you think of coming to this country?”***

* “Account of Sales and Inventories, 1827,” Aaron Anthony Inventory, 19 December 1826, Dodge Collection, Maryland Hall of Records, Annapolis; Dickson J. Preston, Young Frederick Douglass: The Maryland Years (Baltimore, 1980), 204. Harriet Bailey, the actual sister of Douglass, disappeared from the record after this inventory.

**Anna Douglass’s other companion was Louisa Sprague, Rosetta Douglass Sprague’s sister-in-law, who acted as a sometime-companion for Anna Murray Douglass throughout the 1870s and remained in the Douglass home after Anna’s death and until Frederick Douglass’s marriage to Helen Pitts. As for Douglass’s white female guests, Julia Griffiths lived in the Douglass household from 1848-51, when rumors forced her to return to England. Ottilie Assing spent several months yearly in the Douglass home from 1855 until 1881, when she too returned to Europe. See Maria Deidrich, Love Across Color Lines: Ottilie Assing & Frederick Douglass (New York, 1999); Erwin Palmer, “A Partnership in the Abolition Movement,” University of Rochester Library Bulletin, 26 (Autumn/Winter, 1970-71): 1-17.

***FD to HB/RCA, [England], July 1846, Douglass Papers, DLC.

Frederick Douglass's Sister, part 4

On February 21, 1844, John Leeds Kerr died, leaving a will that stipulated that his property should be sold and the proceeds divided among his heirs. While Adams never reported exactly what prompted her escape from slavery, this impending sale may have been the cause, for in August of that same year, when she met Douglass, she was living in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Unlike Douglass, however, Adams never revealed the details of her escape.

West Chester, with its large population of sympathetic Quakers, one stopping point along a route taken by fugitives from Maryland’s Eastern Shore, and Adams’s presence there provides a clue as to how she may have arrived. The fugitive would leave Talbot or its surrounding counties, travel northeast to Delaware, making her way up to the friends of Thomas Garrett in Wilmington. From there, she would gain passage to Philadelphia, then eastward toward David Ruggles’s helpers in New York or west toward the Quakers in West Chester and points further on. Harriet Tubman, from Dorchester County to the south of Talbot County, followed this route herself. Moreover, the seasonal timing for Bailey's departure would be correct, since spring and late summer tended to see a rise in the number of advertisements for escaped slaves.

All that Adams did reveal about her flight was that a black man assisted her and that she went with another woman. Again, she never identified these people, but strong candidates for their roles were John Bennet Adams, his wife Maria Anna (or Anna Maria), and their two children, James and Elizabeth. Both John and Maria were born in Easton, Maryland, in 1825. John Bennet Adams, a free black man, appears in the 1840 U.S. Census fourteen spaces below John Leeds Kerr. By 1850, he was working as a barber in Springfield, Massachusetts -- by then the home of Harriet and Perry Adams -- where he lived with Maria, James (born c. 1842), Elizabeth (born c. 1838), and a 24 year old black man, William Adams. Maria’s obituary included the information that she had been “born in slavery in Maryland” on perhaps dubious date of “July 4, 1817” and that she had escaped with her two children. The paper also reported that, on her 96th birthday, she recalled her life in slavery and “remembered Senator ‘Ben’ Tillman, who was then a small boy and who was distantly related to the family where she lived.” This last bit of information cannot be true since Benjamin “Pitchfork” Tillman was born in South Carolina after Maria Adams made her escape. Yet, it is a telling phonetic mistake since the Tilghman family -- pronounced the same as Tillman – not only populated Talbot county, but also included a member who married into the Kerr family household in Easton.

Frederick Douglass's Sister, part 3

In September 2002, the Nebraska State Historical Society received a donation from Alyce McWilliams Hall, the younger sister of Opal Pollard and the niece of Alice Coffee, donors of the letters in the Library of Congress. Hall's family had entrusted her with a small archive containing 150 years of their history. This collection included a sewing box that Douglass had sent to Bailey from his first trip to England, clippings of the Douglass family’s hair, and a photo of Bailey – Adams – herself. Better yet, the donation included additional letters illuminating Adams’s life and a biography of Adams written by her granddaughter, Alice V. Coffee and further clues that pointed the way to the missing pieces in the story of Harriet Bailey/Ruth Cox Adams.

“Harriet Bailey” began life as Ruth Cox. She was born sometime between 1818 and 1822 in Talbot County, Maryland, the same county as the birthplace of Frederick Douglass. Her mother was Ebby Cox, an enslaved woman who lived and worked in the Easton home of U.S. representative and senator John Leeds Kerr (1780-1844). Her father was, she remembered, a free black laborer who was periodically allowed to live with his enslaved family. Adams last recalled seeing her father when “he told us he was off to Baltimore to work as he could get better pay.” The federal census for 1840, in fact, records that a free black man between the ages of 36 and 55 lived in the home of John Leeds Kerr during that year, as did 10 enslaved males of various ages between 10 and 100, and 11 enslaved women ranging in age from below ten years to 55 years.

Ruth, like her mother Ebby, served as a domestic slave, taking on the duties of nursing, sewing, and, according to family legend, bookkeeping. She supposedly received her first reading lessons from the white women in the household. Literacy among slaves, while neither common nor encouraged, was also neither illegal nor unheard of at this time. Douglass himself received his first reading lessons from his mistress. Obviously, Adams was fully literate by 1846, when her correspondence with Douglass took place. In his first letter to her, he wrote “Your smartness in learning to read and write and your loving letters to me has made you double Dear to me.” This suggests that she may have learned after their acquaintance, but clearly indicates that the Douglass valued the prescence of a literate adult in his household, particularly while he was so far from home.

Adams spent the first twenty or so years of her life in the Kerr home in Easton, Maryland, a large brick house several blocks from the center of town. Her life there corresponded to those years that Douglass was hauled through town and imprisioned in the Easton jail, but neither dwelled upon this time during their correspondence if, indeed they were aware of one another druing these early years. Douglass then spend the bulk of his very early adulthood in Baltimore and began his escape from slavery there in 1837. Adams remained enslaved until 1844.

Frederick Douglass's Sister, part 2

The subject of Harriet Bailey Adams -- or Ruth Cox Adams -- began as a puzzle. Actually, the subject of Harriet Bailey began as a difficult annotation when Douglass's letters to her were chosen for inclusion in the first correspondence volume of his edited papers. The letters themselves had only become available to the public in 1979, when Alice V. Coffee and Opal M. Pollard donated the set of Harriet Bailey and Ruth Adams letters to the Library of Congress. The papers relating to their accession described the items as, “Seven letters from Frederick Douglass to Ruth Cox, later Ruth Adams (often addressed by Douglass as Harriet Bailey)…” They did not give any explanation as to why “Ruth Cox, later Ruth Adams” was “often addressed by Douglass as Harriet Bailey,” or what led the donators, Alice V. Coffee and Opal M. Pollard, to identify Cox, Adams, and Bailey as the same woman. In a 1979 article analyzing the letters, Ellen Ginzburg Migliorino and Giorgio G. Campanaro, both of the Universita di Torino, also identified the recipients as the same woman based upon the tone and subject matter of the letters, and the fact that they were found together. Historians aware of these documents, such as Douglass biographer William McFeely, continued to identify Harriet Bailey and Ruth Adams as two separate women living in the Douglass household as two of the myriad of guests taken in by Douglass and his family. Since the identity of Adams was not at all central to most discussions of Douglass, she remained a passing, obscure mystery. For the editors at the Douglass Papers editing project, however, she required some identification, particularly since she was the recipient of such an unusual set of letters.

With no prior research into this figure, evidence from within the letters provided clues toward documenting the life of Adams. Her name, “Harriet Bailey,” and the address “Sister,” pointed most logically to a supposed sister of Douglass, born around 1826 and valued at $10.00. That Harriet Bailey appeared in inventory of slaves of Aaron Anthony, Douglass's master in Talbot County, Maryland; and both she and Douglass were passed to Thomas Auld after Anthony’s death.

The second clue to Harriet Bailey’s identity within the letters was the mention of her engagement in 1846. This clue led to the Vital Records of Lynn, Massachusetts, which revealed that Harriet Ann Baily, age 25, married Perry F. Adams, also 25, a farmer from Springfield, on November 11, 1847. Harriet Bailey, then, was also Mrs. Perry F. Adams, and evidence of her life could be traced forward to 1860 through the U.S. Census and the Springfield City Directories. Yet, questions still remained. Was Harriet Bailey really the same woman as Ruth Cox? If so, what was the explanation for the two different names, particularly when one was the same name as Frederick Douglass’s mother and youngest sister? Also, What became of her after 1860?

Frederick Douglass's Sister, part 1

Below is the first part of an article that I began about five years ago as part of an annotation. I have most of the narrative down, but I don't yet seem to have the theory or ideas in place that would make it more than a curiosity. Hence, I haven't sought publication, despite some interest in the project. I'm "publishing" it here as incentive to myself to improve it and to force myself to look at it more closely. (Suggestions are welcome, especially if you can point me toward anything that will help me get some sort of conceptual grasp of what I'm trying to do.)

“A few loving words to my own Dear Sister Harriet,” wrote Frederick Douglass on May 16, 1846. “I write not because I have much to say…but because I guess you will be pleased to get a word direct from your Brother’s pen.” Douglass was seldom without much to say in his other letters from this period between1846 and 1848. He was in the midst of his first journey through England and Ireland, and he described in great detail antislavery meetings and speeches, meetings with local government and members of Parliament, and visits historical and literary sites. Most of these letters, however, were written in the voice of his public persona, for publication in the Liberator or as part of his correspondence with agents of the American Antislavery Society. This particular letter to "Dear Sister Harriet" reveals a different, private side of Douglass.

“I got real low spirits a few days ago,” he continued, “quite down at the mouth. I felt worse than get out! My under lip hung like that of a motherless colt I looked so ugly that I hated to see myself in a glass. There was no living for me. I was snappish I would have kicked my grand ‘dadda’! I was in a terrible mood – ‘dats a fact! Ole missus – is you got any ting for poor nigger to eat!! Oh, Harriet could I have seen you then How soon would I have been relieved from that Horrible feeling.”[1] This May 16 letter was the first of a series of letters sent by Douglass to Harriet between May 1846 and January 1847, and then again in 1894, in which an obvious, close friendship was evident.

Harriet Bailey, addressed frequently as “sister,” lived in the Douglass home, helping to care for the Douglass family. She seems to have acted also as a mediator in the Douglass marriage, supporting Douglass’s abolition work while also sympathizing with Anna Murray Douglass and helping her with domestic chores. In 1847, she married Perry Adams and moved to Springfield, Massachusetts. The engagement caused a temporary rift in her relationship with Douglass, from which he recovered and begged her forgiveness. Then, the letters ceased. After her marriage, Bailey remained in contact with Rosetta Douglass and, through Rosetta, Anna Murray Douglass until 1860.[2] Not until fifty years later, in 1894, did Bailey and Douglass communicate with one another again. At this time, however, the intimacy of earlier decades had disappeared. This last portion of the correspondence ended with Douglass’s death in 1898.

This brief sketch of Harriet Bailey Adams’s life raises many questions. Who was this woman with whom Douglass felt so comfortable that he would use African American dialect, refer to himself with a certain reviled word, and speak of his own “fits of melancholy,”[3] all with almost a hint of humor? He did not write to any of his other correspondents, male or female, black or white, in just such a manner -- or at least that correspondence has not survived. How did Harriet Bailey Adams come to live in the Douglass home? Why did their correspondence cease? What became of her? What do the facts of her life have to say about the lives of fugitives, particularly female fugitives, once they reached free states? How does theirfriendship illuminate our understanding of Frederick Douglass, and how does the contrast between their two lives indicate about the trajectory of Douglass’s life in relation to other African Americans, specifically African American women, in the nineteenth century?


[1] Anna Murray Douglass and Rosetta Douglass to HB/RCA, Rochester, NY, 11 March 1846, Douglass Papers, DLC; Rosetta Douglass to HB/RCA, Rochester, NY, 20 April 1860, Douglass Papers, DLC.
[2] FD to HB/RCA, [England], 16 May 1846, Douglass Papers, DLC.
[3] FD to HB/RCA, [England], 16 May 1846, Douglass Paper, DLC.

Dear Mel Gibson

Dear Mel Gibson,

Just last night, I watched your film Apocalypto. What the fuck was that? Stop. Please. Just stop. You have no idea what you are doing – or worse, I fear that you do.

Sure, I enjoyed the hell out of Braveheart; but really, would a minor feudal lord really espouse Enlightenment philosphies of freedom? I still reel with laughter at your Patriot hero insisting “no, they aren’t slaves! I pay them a wage!” What little grasp of history that you have becomes weaker and weaker with every film, replacing any efforts at telling a historically-based story with so much violence that the movie is more of an assault than entertainment. After this last, I simply want to ask “what is the point?”

Because, really, what was the point of Apocalypto?

It wasn’t good storytelling because you violated logic in about ten different ways. A villager who lives within a day’s walk of a city has never heard of it or the nefarious deeds of its citizens? A man wounded through at least two vital organs can walk away at the end, without even the slightest attention to his wounds? How did the guy know the way back to his village? The baby born in the flood? The flood in the cave or hole or whatever it was? The cave or hole or whatever it was? What was the motivation of the evil bastard who taunted our hero? What was the motivation for any of the bad guys? These are basic plot and character points.

I might say that it was a good action and adventure movie, but that whole running through the forest has been done – or have you not seen The Last of the Mohicans?

While the costumes and sets were amazing, they seemed to dress up what was otherwise a snuff film. Really, did you have to linger just a few seconds too long over every gore drenched corpse? Did you have to let every act of violence go on for just slightly longer than was necessary? Did you have to find just the exact camera angle to show the full violent impact of every blow? A spear through the head as show from the exit wound of the mouth. The spurts of blood (which, incidentally, I first thought were some anomoly on my DVD) from a bashed in brain. The brain itself, protruding from the skull. The (seemingly surgically removed) heart ripped from a living body. The bouncing and impaled heads and bodies. See how I’m going on: I’m echoing you, but with less red dye, and more restraint. It was pornographic.

Then, of course, your history was hideous, and I know squat about the Mayans. Were they not astronomers? Could they not have predicted the eclipse? If they were dying of smallpox, would they not have had some contact with the Europeans? Why would they dump dead bodies in the middle of their cornfields? What the hell was going on there? What were you trying to say?

You see, that’s what I fear: that I in fact know what you were trying to say. You spend – what was it? 10 hours (it felt like ten) – you spend the whole movie showing how vicious and evil the Mayans were to one another, whether it be the young men teasing their infertile comrade at the beginning or the whole slave expedition, sacrifice and chase that occupied the rest of the movie. All of your characters were “noble savage” and “brutal savage” stereotypes serving no real function except in the interchange of violent action: bodies to be mutilated by one another.

Then, in the final scene, the Europeans arrive, brandishing a cross, with no sign of guns nor evidence that they were the source of the smallpox seen earlier in the film. They come as rescuers, their very presence saving the hero from certain slaughter. Your message seems to be that the Europeans were Saviors, and that the Mayan civilization deserved to be eradicated. Like your characters, this message, this interpretattion of history is outdated and simplistic.

Bad storytelling, bad history, and not at all entertaining: what was the point? Really, what was the point? Just leave history alone. I beg you.

Sincerely,
Clio Bluestocking,
A former fan (because damn, you were smokin’ hot in Gallipoli and Year of Living Dangerously)

I Love Teaching History Because

The fabulous and wonderful Tenured Radical has tagged me for a meme on “Why I love teaching history" (which she explains in her post on her own list of reasons -- many of which may be echoed here).

Here goes:

1) Teaching is NEVER boring. You get exhausted and frustrated, but you are never bored. If you are bored, you have the power to make whatever changes necessary to cure the boredom. For instance, I tended to get bored teaching the Progressive era. Don’t ask why, because I’m not sure. So I found hooks on which to hang my lectures: birth control, prostitution, the Lower East Tenement Museum website. Coca-cola was my most recent find. Now, I have trouble controlling the material into a lecture or two. For another instance, I found myself bored in reading the students’ writing assignments (this was for an online class). I figured that they must be bored doing the assignments. I changed the assignments from the “explain the reasons for the Spanish-American War” generic types of questions to “You are a young man facing the prospect of going to war in Cuba or the Phillipines during the Spanish American War. Do you join or not? Why?” type of role playing question. Then, I made them play devil’s advocate with another student. The class took off after that. None of us were bored.

2) I love history, and I love learning about history. Teaching history, especially at a community college where you end up teaching classes that force you to venture outside of your specialization, allows you to constantly learn about history. You end up learning not only the developing interpretations of your own field, but also simply the raw facts about history in another field. This past semester, I taught a 20th century world history class. I was out of my league in about ten different ways for that, so I had to learn the history before I taught it. That made for a stressful and exhausting semester, but what fun! I was reminded of the reason that I loved being an undergraduate so much: I was constantly learning new subjects, which made the world seem so much bigger and exciting. Which brings me to….

3) I love sharing the subject that I love with other people. More importantly, I love seeing them develop an interest in that subject. That’s one of the many reasons that I despise standardized tests in grade schools and this movement for “outcomes assessment” at the college level (its coming to your college, if it hasn’t already, the bastards). Those tests are Trivial Pursuit. They hammer “facts” into students head. That is not education, it does not foster an understanding of the subject, it doesn’t teach students to think about a subject, it doesn’t make the subject interesting and therefore doesn’t lead to a lifelong desire to continue learning the subject. Lifelong learning is one of my goals in teaching. We, as teachers, can only do so much in a semester; but if we have inspired students to continue to learn, to have them visit historical sites, read history books, and – most importantly – ask about the historical context of current events, then we have given them a beautiful gift and a means of empowerment. Which leads to….

4) I love seeing students learn to love history (or at least not hate it). I love watching them realize that history is not a list of dates and dead white men. I love watching them realize that humans lived history, made decisions about events, that those decisions had a context, and that those events led to the conditions that we live in today. In other words, I love seeing them find that history is, in fact, relevant; and I love seeing them realize that they do, in fact, need to understand history in order to understand their own world. I love hearing them ask “why?” even when I don’t know the answer. I love seeing them go and find out “why?” I love seeing them – and I’ve found that this is especially true of my African American history students – become transformed and empowered by the subject.

5) I love that my students bring the world into my classroom. This has been especially true this past semester when I have had classrooms that have been up to 90% immigrant and look 100% different from me. I have no idea where they are coming from, but some gradually reveal themselves through the semester, and I want to foster more of that. For example, I have had students from Sierra Leone, Liberia and Gabon in my African American history classes. Now, imagine that: their predecessors were, over the course of 3 centuries, kidnapped from Africa, taken to America, returned to Africa, and now here these students are, sitting in a classroom in America. I also had a student from Ethiopia and a student from Eritrea in the same world history classroom, and they both explained to me the situation between their two countries. This has meant that I have had to relinquish some of my control over the subject, my role as the “expert” to allow their voices to contribute to the subject. As a teacher, and as a person who gives a damn about the condition of other people in the world, this is a humbling experience. I love that.

6) Bonus! I love the performance of teaching. I love getting in front of an audience and doing my thing. I love putting together an interesting presentation with images and maps. I love acting out history – like the Pocahontas/John Smith myth or the Brooks-Sumner incident (but I never hit a student, of course!) -- to make it come alive. I love reading out part of a Frederick Douglass speech. I love that, when I did that, a student was so inspired that he took over and read the next paragraph of the speech. I love that, when I read “Aren’t I a Woman” out loud, the women in the class responded as if in a church service “uh-huh,” “I know that’s right,” and “Amen.” I love when YouTube allows the historical figure to enter the classroom. I love that the history creates a character and lines for me. I love that this performance makes teaching history creative in ways that no other job that I have held has allowed.

You're it!

I tag anyone who teaches (or has ever taught, at whatever level and in whatever way) who reads this blog.

Also, to alter the meme: because it is so rare, if you love what you do, you are tagged to give five reasons as to why you love it.

Writing and Process

When I wrote the first book, I didn’t really work it through. That is, until the very end of the initial draft (aka “The Dissertation”), when I just forced myself to sit down every weekend and crank out half a chapter until the whole thing was finished, I didn’t really develop a strategy or plan. I mostly collected the research, pondered what amounted to the plot, and reacted to the nearest impending deadline. That shows in the end product.

When I wrote the second book, I tried to approach the subject a little differently. The book itself is a much different creature than the first, having an entirely different intended audience, and being wider in the scope of time and subject, while at the same time more narrow in focus. For that reason, it is also stronger in different ways than the first, and weaker. My approach to the work, however, was slightly more systematic and less in reaction to deadlines (although those were a significant factor given that I had to write the thing in six to nine months). I also had a better grasp of the types of information that I should assemble beyond a simple timeline and the sorts of questions that I should ask to make the narrative something more than a recitation of events. I completely floundered on that in the first book.

The experience of both of those projects, as well as my doodlings on this blog, has taught me a bit more about my own process. First of all, I tend to begin writing only when I am ready to write the whole thing from start to finish, and then I try to write the thing in as few drafts as possible. In other words, when I begin writing, I want to be able to sit down and write from start to finish, then polish up what I have written in subsequent drafts.

That means that I have to have a very detailed outline before I begin, especially if I am trying to say something complicated. You can probably tell the quality of my outline in my final product. Better outlines produce tighter writing, whereas my general ideas end up in sloppy streams-of-consciousness. I’m at peace with that on the blog, because I consider this more of a workshop for myself, a place where the prospect of an audience provides the impetus for the act of writing that I do not have for a journal. Blogging is just working out for my writing muscles.

Unfortunately, that fewer drafts approach means that I don’t see the holes in my research and thinking until a much later point in my writing. That is my second lesson. As I get into the narrative and explanation, I realize that I have more questions about the evidence for my ideas. If I have questions about the evidence – such as the actual existence of evidence or its strength – then I end up with questions about my argument (such as I may have, I have also found that I am more of a story-teller than an argument-maker). Because of my approach to my drafts, however, this crucial work starts at a much later stage in my project than it should. Sometimes, too late.

For instance, on the first book, I expended a lot of time and energy trying to understand the motivations of my subject. My greatest flaw was that I focused too much on her actions as a means of understanding her ideas because she did not leave behind much introspective writing. I failed to try to get into her head by reading what she read. When I realized this glaring omission, I was too far into publication and the reviews noted the gap.

Similarly, as I wrote the second book, I began to questions the patterns that I was discerning in the history of That Place, and realized that I needed much more evidence if I was going to be satisfied with the credibility of my story. Fortunately (or not), detail, evidence, and analysis were not the mission of this second book.

These two problems also result from my total lack of discipline as a writer. As you can see from this blog, I don't tend to write with much regularity. In fact, my inspiration usually comes from copious amounts of caffeinne and the desire to avoid doing something else. I can be a disciplined writer, setting aside blocks of time for writing and defending those blocks from any encroachment; but I don’t become disciplined until I sit down to write that start-to-finish draft. What I should be doing is finding ways to play with my ideas in writing much earlier in my project. I should be setting aside blocks of time for writing earlier in the part that I consider my research stage. One of the reasons that I tend not to do that is that I feel as if all of that writing is going to waste if it isn’t part of that start-to-finish draft.

Which is where the blog comes in. As it happens, I have a short project in mind. Two actually. One for which I actually have written a start-to-finish draft, and with which I am still not satisfied. The other for which I have done a goodly amount of research and for which I seem to have a general idea of an outline. So, what I’m thinking, is that I should begin a series of drafts of one or the other on this blog as an exploration of ways to make my process more systematic and thoughtful, of ways to make myself look more closely at what I have written, and of ways to motivate myself to work more efficiently. If nothing else, I will feel satisfied that some sort of audience has seen some part of my work, should it never reach the fruition of publication – even if that audience is searching for “stretched out cunts” (yes, a real search string on my Site Meter) or “rotten teeth” or images of the Last Supper and Isis tattoos.


Edited to add: It seem New Kid on the Hallway was thinking about the same issue, except she read a book on the subject too!

A Sort of Apology and a Rant

Every interaction with the press and the Peeport in regard to my book sends me into paroxysms of fury. Fortuantely, I now belong to a gym, which allows me to literally work out my anger; but, still, my goal in regard to those two places is to move past the fury so that I don’t have this whole PTSD reaction whenever I deal with either. Part of doing that involves understanding their position and accepting my own rather prima dona expectations as inflated.

To be fair to Madame Moneygrubber, she was just doing her job. Also, she was the point person who, in being tasked to ask for the enormous amounts of money that the Peeport does charge for reproducing their images and in being the final representative of That Place with whom I come in contact, does become the focus for a lot of my emotional flak that she doesn’t deserve. She does her job, and does it well. She also does her job without being condescending or bitchy, which is something that I cannot say for some of her co-workers who deal with the public, nor her supervisors.

I and some of the other people who have had to deal with her in her capacity as Madame Moneygrubber are more frustrated at the policy of the Peeport that she carries out. In fact, some of her own wording in the real correspondence, particularly in her automatic defensive posture when I asked “out of curiosity” about the origins of the policy, and a statement she made about “changes” that had taken place in that area of the museum, suggest that she has her own frustrations with her position in the museum.

Also to be fair to her, she actually was the only person there who did show an interest in my project, who wished me well when I left, and who wishes me well in my current job. I like to think that she is genuine. Even her – as a co-worker described her – “apple-polishing” personality, her “company man” attitude, I like to think stems from her genuine positive personality rather than from some nasty, manipulative agenda.

Working at the Peeport was not simply personally soul-killing. Part of my problem there did stem from my own crises; but the institution itself was sick at some fundamental level that probably has quite a bit to do with the way museums and libraries and other educational types of institutions are funded.

For example, on my first day of work there, my supervisor (who could have taught me quite a lot about being an archivist) told me that she would be leaving within a month. The Peeport was attempting to avoid a mass lay-off by offering a sweet early retirement package to all employees who had worked there for at least 20 years. “I know how it used to be,” she told me, “and I see how it is; and the difference breaks my heart.” She just had to leave, she said, to save her sanity.* The departments devoted to research and preservation of all collections were gutted through this early-retirement deal. They were not replaced at any level. Their tasks were divided among the “survivors,” all of whom did their best to make themselves indispensable from sheer fear that the Peeport would next begin actual lay-offs and that they would be the first to go.**

Actually, the first to go would be (and may still become) the employees in the education department, some of the lowest paid employees of the museum. The CEO of the Peeport stood in front of that department at a semi-annual meeting and told them that he hoped to make their department 100% volunteer within the next five years. He wasn’t delivering this as a “harsh reality,” he was saying this as if it were a fantastic development, one that would reduce revenue expenditures by eliminating salaries while having a workforce that was so committed that they would work for no money.

As the Peeport announced all of these plans to reduce manpower, they also announced plans to redevelop one side of the museum’s grounds. The fund were rolling in to implement a huge building and exhibit design project to be developed by outside contractors (i.e., the Peeport’s exhibit department would not be involved). The juxtaposition, often in the same all-employee meeting, of the early-retirements, desire to convert an entire department’s workforce to volunteer, and this massive expansion of the museum’s grounds that would cost a small fortune, perplexed anyone who did not work in the development department or at the top levels of the administration.

“Enraged” would actually be the more appropriate verb there. “What the fuck?” was heard rather frequently, along with “are they high?” and “what an idiot!” When I write “was heard,” I mean “was heard not only among the employees but also by visitors to the museum.” That was how low morale had sunk.

Yet, the administration was not high or idiotic (well, not entirely). This was just how funding and operation work. As I understand, fundraising is most successful for what they call “capital.” That is, big wig donors like to give money for structures that can have their name on it for the next 100 or so years. No one wants to open up the Thurston Moneybags III Toilet Paper Trust. I’m also not certain, but aren’t there laws about what funds can be raised for what depending on the profit-status of an institution?

Whatever the reasons, the result is the insane situation in which the manpower is reduced on the one hand, while the physical structures of the institution are expanded on the other. To simply keep the institution open, the museums have to find many other ways to earn money . Hence, the exhorbitant price for image reproductions and Madame Moneygrubber’s statement that other historical societies and libraries “don’t know enough to charge more.”

The Peeport was not the only institution facing this problem. All across the region, and all across the country, museums are contracting, and have been for many decades. While I worked there, the Peeport cited declining attendance rates, using 1976 as their base date for comparison. A brief news search revealed that many other museums were doing the same. The question seemed to be, “how do we return to those levels of attendance?” My glib answer was, “have another Bicentennial.”

Attendance rates are important because admission charges are one of the main sources of revenue, and attendance numbers attract other sources of revenue. They demonstrate that donations are a good investment. One of the arguments for expanded building at the Peeport was in the line of “if we build it, they will come.” Bigger, fancier buildings would bring more visitors and more visitor money. The problem was, building did not bring Them. Building seems to bring some of them, but not enough to save the other areas of the museum.

The reasons for the decline are myriad, but the solutions don’t seem to be addressing the consequences of the reality of those declining attendance numbers. All of which points to a much larger problem in regard to historical preservation and education outside of the classroom. Of what use are these shiny new facilities if there are no people who can ensure that the information conveyed in the museum is accurate or current or if the artifacts that should form the crux of the museum’s exhibits are preserved and available for interpretation both in the museum and by scholars? Of what use are the museum’s material resources if the human resources aren’t treated with the same respect as the museum’s facilities?

To give an egregious example I will actually venture away from the Peeport to the Lincoln Museum in Springfield.*** When you walk into the museum, you face a gigantic façade of the White House, with the manikins of the entire Lincoln family out front to greet you. On the porch of the White House stand U.S. Grant and George McClellen, appearing to be about two minutes away from a fistfight, John Wilkes Booth staring intently and malevolently toward Lincoln, and Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass. As I stood bizarrely transfixed by the Douglass manikin, two black women – the only black people that I saw in the entire museum -- approached the guide or guard (or whatever he was) sitting nearby. “Who are they?” the women asked, almost as if they were surprised to see black people represented as something other than slaves. “I don’t know who she is,” the guide said, indicating Truth. “He,” and he gestured to Douglass, “I think had something to do with the Underground Railroad.”

These two women, much like every other visitor that I had overheard in the museum, wanted information. They wanted more than the signs provided. They wanted someone with knowledge to tell them what all of this was about, beyond the signs and exhibits. They wanted clarification. What they got was the myth of the exhibits and the ignorance of the “guides.” This to me seemed the tip of a huge problem, and part of that huge problem had to do with the money going into the facility but not into the humans who would provide the content.

To go back to Madame Moneygrubber, I vented my frustration at her. My real frustration is at the way the money is distributed, not just at this institution, but at all of these institutions in general. My real frustration extends to the fact that my students have to work two jobs to pay for school, and still go into debt with loans. My real frustration is at the sub-living salaries of teachers, librarians, and museum professionals. My real frustration is at the cost of research and education. My real frustration is that the people who have the money seem to want only monuments to myths. My real frustration is at the encroaching feeling of futility of simply teaching history, which is a vital part of an educated populace, in the face of what is ultimately an insane economy that seems to reward those who are only educated enough to be dangerous.

*Incidentally, her next job was at the Getty, where she was promoted within six months. She did have a lot to teach me.

**My problems there were a result of this fear. Also, my departure freed my salary, paltry as it was, to use elsewhere. A volunteer, who works one day a week, now fills my position, along with the occasional, part-time, unpaid intern.

*** I won’t go into the complete trainwreck of their historical interpretation (which, suffice to say, has the general thesis of “Lincoln: He Freed The Slaves. All. By. Himself. Yea!”).

Dear Madame Moneygrubber

I was getting over being pissy, when Madame Moneygrubber from the Big Museum in That Place contacted me wanting its second pound of flesh -- and they won't take it in cellulite from my ass. C'est la vie.:

Madame Moneygrubber
Intellectual Properties Manager
Peeport Museum

Dear Madame Moneygrubber,

First of all, yes, my new position is quite interesting. Although, being an associate professor at a highly-respected community college with bright and fascinating students in a major metropolitan area cannot compare to sitting in a leaky, asbestos-infested basement shuffling photocopies from one file to another. Also, having colleagues who respect me and demonstrate interest in my work places so much responsibility upon my shoulders. Life was much easier when all of my colleagues not only underestimated my abilities, but also undervalued my skills by eroding all of my responsibility in order to shore up their own position and develop their martyr complex of being "overworked." There is so much more pressure here; but, as you know, one must follow the money, and since I am being paid three times what I was making at the Peeport – as much, if I am not mistaken, as my former supervisor’s supervisor and, perhaps, yourself – that I had to make the change. Of course, that means that I can no longer plead the moral superiority of poverty so evident in most of the Peeport employees.

Which brings me to the purpose of my last missive. Perhaps I did not make myself clear. I understood that you make an initial charge for image reproductions and a later charge, after publication, for the licensing. I am, after all, educated, with three graduate degrees, can read your policy despite the ways that you make it less than easily accessible on your website, and do actually read my email. My question actually went to the origins of this policy. As you must know, given that you mention your association with local historical societies repeatedly and constantly in every conversation, that most institutions charge for both the reproductions and rights in a lump sum at the time of the transaction. Since the Peeport’s policy seems to double the cost for the use of an image, and create more work on your end, you can see how I might be curious, as a former archivist, why this unusual policy was put in place and if it might cut into the use of your collections.

As you say, you think the Peeport’s policy is a fair one. I would not expect you to consider it otherwise, as your job and your sense of importance depend entirely upon collecting these fees for the Peeport. You are also correct in that few other repositories offer what you do. They merely provide excellently scanned images, as half of the cost of the Peeport, and within a week (over a weekend in the case of the tiny institution down the street from yours).

The Peeport, on the other hand, was kind enough to stall its response to my query for two months, when I had the great pleasure of contacting you to remind you of my query. Perhaps this was planned upon your part, since the delay caused you to provide me with the employee rate for the images, which you would not do when I was an employee because you wanted to treat me with the same consideration as you would any other professional historian. At least, that was true when it came to the charges. In regard to the research, the library staff was very considerate in not pestering me with questions or suggestions about my research, as they do with other historians who visit the institution.

The Peeport was also gracious enough to offer the services of its Publicity Department to write part of my manuscript for me in exchange for a discounted rate on the images. Naturally, the Peeport’s policies are ethical enough to offer only to write the sections that would deal with the Peeport itself. As your Big Wig Local Historian pointed out to me when I first asked if he would consider looking at my manuscript, he was not going to do my work for me.

Indeed, I was quite impressed with your institution’s desire not to foster competition, and therefore bad blood, among its employees. When I met with Big Wig Local Historian, he made it clear that I was not to compete with the reprint of his own book – for twenty years an established standard history for an industry that existed in the town for 50 years of its nearly 400 year history. Since he does have a lifetime of research in the area, and I am only a young upstart with a PhD and a single other publication with a mere academic press, I had to agree that his took precedent. Unfortunately, my own ego forced me to continue with my own project, but he was professional enough to refrain from criticizing my book in a public forum in exchange for $1600 and a credit. His sense of ethics, of course, deemed that he correct some of my grammar to merit the title of “consultant.”

Again, I must reiterate that I am not challenging your charges nor refusing to pay. In fact, between Historian and your department, I do believe that the Peeport has made more money from my book than I ever will, and I wrote the thing! Isn't the irony amusing? (Even photographer of the cover image did not receive payment. He is an employee of the Peeport, as you know, and you have an agreement that he pay you a percentage of the sales from his images that include the Peeport. So, I suppose that you received 10% of nothing in this case! Yes, irony abounds and it is amusing!) All jesting aside, you all are the most important institution in the town, if not in the entire region of southern New England, or New England itself. Thus, it is only right that you derive some profit from anyone’s work on the area. I should absolutely pay any price that you name since my own appellation will forever be associated with the town (and, by extension, the Peeport). In fact, I should pay every business in the town, maybe even every resident or at least every descendant of its original settlers whose names I mention (which would include you several times over, would it not?), for the same privlege since I am attempting to make my name from the town's history, and the town's people should receive some of the profit.

Additionally, I do understand the need for libraries and historical societies to charge for some of their services in this era of evolving technology. As you say, “many historical societies don’t know enough to charge more for the images and information they offer.” They would have much larger budgets if they abandoned that pathetic concept of not-for-profit and that old New England tradition of free public libraries. Information is power, and those who control it should have the right to profit from it. After all, if we can’t pay the price, then we shouldn’t be in the game of researching history. We less-than-wealthy historians should leave research to the leisure class, who are probably more competent at writing the correct type of history than mere academics.

So, once again, I thank you for your time and interest. Of all of my colleagues from my time at the Peeport, you certainly show the most enthusiastic interest in the progress of my book. Rest assured, as soon as I begin to receive royalties for its sales, you will receive a check for the licenses for the images.

One more thing: there has been some noise from Speilberg's and Scorsese's people about the movie rights. Should I also have them contact you?

Sincerely,
Clio Bluestocking.

****No, I did not send THIS letter! I wanted to, desperately. In fact, I wanted to send another one that consisted primarily of suggestions that she and her institution violate themselves repeatedly. Instead, I thanked her for her information that "this has always been the policy" and pointed out to her that the reason that libraries and historical societies don't charge more for their services might be because they are not run for a profit.

I'm Pissy

I am in a pissy pissy mood. Just frustrated and ticked off and paralyzed by low levels of anger and depression. Pissy pissy pissy.

I'm pissy about the students who sent e-mails every other day during the break, all demanding to know why they didn't make an A when they either did not turn in the final paper, turned in the final paper after the semester had ended, failed to take the final, or simply failed the final. I'm pissy about the students who sent e-mails on Christmas day and expected me to answer them IMMEDIATELY.

I'm pissy about the testing center at the university where I teach online because I have not received the finals for half of my students and there really isn't anything that I can do about that and now the students are not just complaining to me, but complaining to people higher than me. And I'm still pissy that I can't do anything about not receiving the finals except send e-mails to people saying that I haven't received the finals.

I'm pissy at that damn car with the alarm that keeps going off down in the parking lot. Do those damn things do anything but annoy everyone in earshot?

I'm pissy that I was so lenient with my students. I'm pissy that I have a hard time being a hardass. I'm pissy that I'm a pushover for every hardluck story and I'm pissy that I resent myself for being a pushover.

I'm pissy that Big Museum in That Place knew about the printing of my book before I did. I'm pissy that the only person who said anything about it was the one who wants the extra pound of flesh for the images that I used. I'm pissy that they want a copy to send to their library when the library is not going to accession it. I'm pissy that the publisher only sent me five comp copies, but sent the photographer who took the cover image and the guy who charged $1600 to "read" the manuscript ten copies each. I'm pissy that I can't tell them all to fuck off because that would be "unprofessional." I'm pissy that I can't enjoy the publication of this book.

I'm pissy because I feel that I should understand more about these elections. I'm pissy that, when I try to research the candidates, their positions and ideas all turn to water and slip through my hands. I'm pissy that I feel so alienated from the process. I'm pissy that I feel like we are in a time that requires great courage and action but that I have no idea where or how that courage and action should manifest. I'm pissy because I realize that I am probably too self-absorbed, lazy and apathetic to be courageous. I'm pissy because I fear that the courageous people will all be crushed under this bigger machine of evil of which I am a part.

I'm pissy because I don't think that I want to remain friends with someone who has been a friend for over a decade because I had several very ugly insights about him and can't seem to forgive him for them.

I'm pissy because I can't take criticism. I'm pissy because I know the importance of criticism, but cannot seem to incorporate it and instead become paralyzed by it. In fact, I'm pissy because criticism makes me paranoid that I am doing everything wrong and can do nothing correctly and that I am making grave mistakes without even knowing that I am and that my employment is constantly in jeapordy. I am pissy because I know that this is paranoia, yet I still have no idea how to think in a different way.

I'm pissy that I cannot seem to gain control over words. I'm pissy that my writing is an absolute wreck of late. I'm pissy because I can't seem to shape the words around the ideas in my head. I'm pissy because I can't seem to take their meanings and mold them into something that resembles what I mean. I'm pissy because words are so linear and two dimensional and I want to convey an idea that is geometric and three dimensional, if not four dimensional. I'm pissy that I feel all of the limits on my abilities and intelligence. I'm pissy that I feel so imcompetent.

I'm pissy that somewhere, in the back of my head and neck, I have an exhaustion knotted up so tightly that I don't think that I will ever get it so relax and release.

I'm just pissy.

Blegh.

From My Self-Evaluation

Procrastinating postponed for the day, I finally went into the office only to find that I was the only instructor to do so! Nonetheless, I did still have work to do, the most immediate task of which was to compile my teaching portfolio for my first-year performance review. Yes, I know that I've only been there a semester, but they do reviews at the end of each calendar year, not at the end of each academic year. Thus, now.

Part of the review involves a self-evaluation. It is supposed to be brief and I am anything but! This is the exerpt from the section, which I thought that I would share with you:

This semester challenged me in many ways. My first task was to simply develop lectures for my four different courses: US History to 1865, US History since 1865, African American History to 1865 (two sections), and 20th Century World History. [NOTE: I was also teaching an African American History since 1865 class online with 35 students. These classes each had 30 students.] While I had lectures prepared for the U.S. History survey courses, my Power Point presentations for these lectures had disappeared in one of my many moves of the past two years. Thus, I ended up creating new presentations, which I believe are far superior than the old ones. I was quite familiar with the material for African American History to 1865, but I had not yet taught the course itself, so I developed both lectures and presentations. Twentieth Century World History was almost entirely new to me. While I am familiar with 20th century U.S. history, this course required a global perspective. Thus, I not only had to develop lectures and presentations, but also learn the subject myself. The course was much more challenging in that it began mid-semester, so each week I prepared essentially what would have been two weeks’ worth of material during a semester of the regular length. As a result, I believe that these combined factors forced me to become a better and more innovative teacher in order to prevent complete exhaustion.

I focused primarily on lectures because they were the pedagogical method with which I was most familiar and comfortable, and because they often serve as a good base from which a more interactive and interesting class can be developed. As the semester progressed and as I learned more about different teaching styles and methods from both the professional development classes that I took and from discussions with other teachers (perhaps the most valuable portion of those professional development courses), I found new ways to think about presenting the material. For example, by the end of the semester, I had begun to incorporate brief, “reaction” writing assignments into the class, I discovered ways to use websites and film clips to entice students into discussion, and I learned that they, in fact, have quite a lot to say about the subject.

Unfortunately, my weakest point was classroom management. This was particularly true in three areas. The first was attendance. I made the assumption that all of my students were adults, and that adults know to attend class regardless of its requirement for their grade. Thus, I attempt not to treat them like children and require attendance as a portion of their grade. That was a huge mistake on my part. First of all, not all adults know how to be good students. Second of all, these adults have many obligations vying for their time, and school sometimes ends up at the bottom of a list of equally important tasks. As a result, attendance fluctuated wildly throughout the semester.

The second problem that I had was managing assignments. This manifested in two ways. First, I assigned the quizzes generated by the textbook website without anticipating the amount of time that this would consume in simply recording a stream of grades, and without anticipating the huge number of technical problems that this would entail when the quizzes did not “go through.” Second, I made the mistake of sympathizing too much with every excuse and permitted students to turn in assignments late. This resulted in a steady stream of papers throughout the semester. Third, I overestimated both the computer savvy of the students and the amount of time available for grading. Thus, I planned far more out-of-class writing assignments than I was able to assign and grade, and I required that these assignments be posted in the discussion section of [Blackboard], a feature of online life with which many of my students were unfamiliar and reluctant to use. This led to confusion when I cut down the number of assignments. This also led me to spend too much time teaching and re-teaching the mechanics of the discussion boards.

I also relied upon the quizzes and writing assignments to prepare them for a comprehensive final, omitting a mid-term. Given some of the grades on the final exams, I believe that I did them a disservice since the mid-term not only tests their knowledge of that material, but also helps to teach them how to take a test. I later felt as if I sent them into the final cold, regardless of earlier assignments or of extensive review sessions.

The final problem that I had was in controlling the classroom space. Two of my classrooms were auditoriums with the seating arranged not only from side to side and front to back, but also (from my point of view) floor to ceiling. Furthermore, the rooms could hold over 100 students, while I had 30 students enrolled in the class. The students, with their natural tendency to space themselves throughout the entire room, were widely dispersed. As a result, I expended far too much energy in trying to include everyone into the classroom environment.

Learning from my mistakes, I have already revised my courses for the spring semester. I have decided to make attendance 10% of the course grade, and to have all quizzes and short writing assignments take place during class. This should double their incentive to attend, allow them to interact with the material more constructively, cut down on the technical problems that plagued the other assignment, and limit the flow of grading for me so that I can concentrate more on the course content. I have also decided to have a mid-term exam; and, finally, to place spatial boundaries upon the classroom by limiting the area in which the students are allowed to sit.

These extensive criticisms of myself aside, I don’t think that I had a terrible semester. Indeed, this was perhaps one of the most challenging and exciting of my entire career. I not only created a base of lectures with presentations, and did so for courses that I had not before taught in the classroom if at all, but learned new methods of teaching that are much more stimulating and effective than simply lecturing. My presentations are quite good in that they incorporate more visual elements and only an outline of text. Moreover, I embed web links into the presentation in order to incorporate those sites, documents, or media clips into my lectures while also allowing students to revisit those sites once I had posted the presentation slides in [Blackboard]. Still, to improve the presentations I took a workshop which taught me how to visually present abstract ideas.

In addition to my lectures, I was able to provide students with the opportunity to encounter history outside of the classroom, the textbook, and my own presentation. I invited a guest lecturer on race and policing into my US History since 1865 class when a historian friend visited, an event that I publicized through the Online daily newsletter, which attracted students from other classes, and which engaged my students, particularly the minority males who have had their own experiences with the subject. I am also proud of my assignments that required students to visit area museums and write a critical reflection of their visit, since the reported that they not only enjoyed the assignment, but also discovered history as something that exists in the landscape of their own city and in museums that are not just for kids. In fact, between Frederick Douglass’s Cedar Hill, the Sandy Springs Slave Museum, and the Holocaust Museum, the students reported that history had become something of a profound and moving subject that involved actual human beings and that informs their own lives today.

[The rest detailed the myriad training classes and meetings that I attended, and outlined my goals for the coming year.]

My Grandfather's Hands

When my grandfather lay in his coffin, the only thing that I noticed were his fingernails. Square and flat, filed off straight at the top, even in life. I remember this detail because my brother, large beside me, gripped the edge of the coffin, and I noticed that his fingernails were the same. Square and flat, but chewed and broken off straight at the top. His hands were much larger, too, like bear’s paws, a larger version of my grandfather’s

My grandfather died on Father’s Day, 2000. Through the following summer and fall, my aunt and father settled my grandfather’s estate. My father handled much of the paper work while my aunt dealt with the intricacies of the house. In sorting through the personal papers she came across the letters between my grandfather and grandmother from the time before their marriage (that I have written about before) and a trove of photographs that dated back nearly a century.

Many of those photographs included my grandfather’s family. I was fortunate enough to have known two great-grandmothers and one great-grandfather, but these were the parents of both of my grandmothers. When I was a small child, both of my grandfathers seemed like solitary people, added onto their wives’s families. That they had mothers and fathers, maybe even sisters or brothers of their own, did not even occur to me until I was twelve and became interested in genealogy.

This grandfather had been the only child of parents who had grown so old that they did not expect to have children at all. In fact, my grandfather’s father was exactly a century older than myself, born only a few years after the Civil War, while my grandfather was born on the eve of World War I. As I write this, I realize that my great-grandfather was older than myself when he became a father. My great-grandmother was about my age.

The photographs of them, the first images I ever saw of either, show a tall, angular man with grey hair and deep-set eyes, seated next to a small, round woman with curly hair and big eyes. They have slight smiles on their faces, which gives them friendly expressions. My grandfather as a child stands in the background, resembling his mother, but with jet black hair brushed straight back from a widow’s peak. He looks a bit like Eddie Munster.

The later pictures of my grandfather show him with his various bands (again, the names escape me). His hair was still jet black and slicked back, although my aunt swears that he was totally gray by the time that he graduated from college. In one, he stands in a row with his bandmates, all young men in tuxedos, turned partway from the camera, wearing solemn expressions. My grandfather stands on the end. I remember this picture in particular because he looked just like my brother, but smaller.

“Jeez,” I said, when I noticed the difference, “Grampy looks just like Meef.*” In fact, they were probably about the same age, my brother in that present and my grandfather in the photo. Although I said this to no one in particular, my mother stood next to me. “No,” she said. “He doesn’t.”

To be continued.


* “Meef” was my brother’s nickname for the longest time, the origins of which remain murky, but have some relationship to a childhood vacation to Murfreesboro and his habit of demanding “me first.”

Avatar!

If you look over to the right, you may notice that I have changed my avatar. The previous avatar was actually "Clio," from "Allegory of Painting" by Johannes Vermeer, which I ripped off from Wikipedia. Clio, by the way, was also the Greek goddess of history (see, I can sometimes be a little bit clever!):

I was perfectly happy with her, but since I've seen her used as an avatar by other bloggers, I thought that maybe the avatar could do with a little refurbishment.

A few months back, Vuboq (hi Vuboq!) posted a link that, through a series of procrastinatory events laced with alcohol, produced this potential avatar replacement:

Yes: a Lego Clio! My hair isn't actually that stylish, nor am I quite that stumpy; but I loves me some capes (the red thing in the background) and scarves! Coffee and books, too. I also tend to dress like that, complete with lace up boots. I loves me some lace-up boots because they are really the only type of shoe that stays on my feet. Anyway, I rejected this because this blog is not -- heck, I am not -- that whimsical. Clio Vermeer stayed.

Yesterday, I came across this link through a post at Shakesville. Through yet another series of procrastinations not entirely unrelated to today's procrastinations, this time laced with insomnia, this was produced:

Clio the Hero! That one looks a bit like me, I must say, except my shoes don't have heels due to an unfortunate incident during the interview for the very job that I now hold. Also, my tits were never that perky. Surgery might have to be involved for anyone's tits to look that perky. My ass might be a tad bit bigger, my legs a bit shorter, and my shoulders a bit narrower (although I am the last remaining hold-out from the 1980s on the subject of shoulder pads, so those could be my shoulders, just with David Byrne padding). Otherwise, that's me, if I were a superhero. Notice the blue stockings?

If you go visit the sites that generated these images, you might notice that they allow more fanciful renditions of a person. Yet, I produced two that look like approximations of my actual self. No mermaid tails, nor elf ears. No shining armor, nor fierce animal companions. Just me. Only better.

I'm put in mind of an episode of The Office. Dwight (played by the wonderful Rainn Wilson, also known as Ruth's asexual paramour in the third or fourth season of Six Feet Under) had created an avatar for himself in a virtual reality world. Another character, Jim, commented, "Dwight's avatar looks just like Dwight in the real world, except he can fly." Later in the episode, we learn that Jim has created his own avatar and Jim's avatar looks just like Jim in the real world, except he can play guitar. In both cases, their failure to improve upon their own appearance -- to even change the type of clothes they wear or change their haircuts or give themselves buff bods or various heroic accoutrement -- their failure to create a fantasy avatar implied a failure of their imaginations.

Maybe my avatars are a failure of imagination, an indication that I cannot come up with anything more interesting to add to my image or to fully inhabit a pretended role. In my defense on this point, I did want to add wings, but the wings in the program seemed more a part of the background than of the avatar. Otherwise, I can't completely argue against the shortcomings of my imagination, as that has seemed to be a bane of my existence, a part of my nature, a reason that I am not particularly clever on most occasions. Still, I'd rather not see my avatar as a failure of my imagination and, instead, see her as an acceptance of me.* I don't want different colored hair, I don't want tails , I don't want horns. I just want me.

Only better.

*Although, I really wouldn't mind wings, or at least the ability to fly. Actually, now that I brought it up, a monkey tail might be cool too. Then I would look like one of the Wicked Witch of the West's flying monkeys!

Pro-cras-tin-a-a-tion, It's Makin' Me Late

Just when you think you have explored every facet of procrastination possible, you find new dimension heretofore unthinkable. Today, I have managed to not only procrastinate on the tasks that I should be doing, but also on the tasks that I was using as my tools of procrastination.

Normally, I’m very good at what I call “productive procrastination.” Perhaps you know of this method? You have a very large job to do, but manage to find five hundred other jobs that you can do instead.

For instance, my apartment was impeccably clean when I wrote my master’s thesis. To show that I had advanced to the level of a doctoral student, I managed to learn to belly dance, swing dance, zydeco dance, complete two internships, spend a summer in New York, volunteer at Planned Parenthood and the women’s center, and become an active member of the campus chapter of NOW, along with keeping an impeccably clean apartment while allegedly writing my doctoral dissertation. If I need to get my oil changed, clean out the closet, run sundry errands, I can usually check these off of my “to do” list when I should be grading. Heck, you could even say that I procrastinated on a teaching career by getting a library science degree, and procrastinate on writing by teaching, and teaching by writing. In any case,I may not get that one big task done in a timely fashion, but at least I can say that I got all of these other little things done in the meantime.

Today, I really should have gone into the office and finished my teaching portfolio, or put together my proposal for honor’s sections of two classes, or began my syllabi for the spring semester. In fact, I fully and honestly intended to do that. Eventually. First, I wanted to strip this one tiny, little section of that fireplace surround. But the cold – oh, my god, with the wind – was about to take the skin off of my face. (Did you know that gel could freeze? I didn’t. My porch is so cold that the gel stripper freezes before it can dissolve the paint.)

My little delay prevented, I headed for the shower to begin to get ready, fully intending to go directly into the office. But first, since I was headed in the general direction of the hall closet, I might as well stow these framing projects scattered around the living room. If a huge, nasty mess graces the balcony, then the apartment itself should at least be neat; and the stowing would not take too long. Except, in the middle of stowing the framing crap, I realized that I hadn’t given myself a facial in a couple of weeks.

By “facial,” I mean that mud stuff that dries up on your face and supposedly removes oil and dirt (I never got why plastering “mud” on your face was supposed to clean it, but I have been brainwashed by the beauty industry). I could put that crap on and let it dry while I pick up the framing crap. Then, I could get into the shower, wash it off, get dressed, and go to the office.

While waiting for the mud crap to dry, while picking up the framing crap, I realized that maybe I could be actually productive in terms of work by grading some of my fall online class’s finals that have dribbled in along with their final papers. Since the software for the class is so slow, and since all of their papers are online, I realized that I could split my efforts by picking up the framing stuff while the software loads and reloads, all while waiting for the mud to dry. So I loaded up the class software, then went back to the framing mess, with the mud drying on my face.

At which point, I realized that, once I had concentrated most of the framing mess into one place in the living room, I could get to the wall and find the stud on which I could hang that big ole mirror. Then, I could hang the mirror, put away the framing stuff, grade the online papers and finals, and wash off the mud crap.

Since the mud crap had dried and begun to itch, I started with that. In the bathroom, however, I realized that I could not remember if I had taken my vitamins and meds (actually it is just one med). One of those days of the week pill boxes could solve that problem; and -- what do you know? -- I have one, which meant that I had to go dig it out of the hall closet before I forgot about it. Then I could wash the itchy mud crap off and fill the pill box. Once I had filled the pill box, however, I realized that I now had to stash the pill bottles somewhere. This meant a cleaning of the medicine cabinet.

In the middle of cleaning out the medicine cabinet, I remembered the grading. The software for the class would be loaded, so I could just run into my office and go to the appropriate section. The appropriate section would take a few minutes to load, which meant that I could get something else done in the meantime; but on my way to my computer I passed framing mess.

The framing mess distracted me momentarily until I went to put something into the hall closet. I would need to make a space for the framing crap, but first, back to the grading crap to see if the page loaded.

It had. So, as long as I was there at the computer, I might as well begin; but, when I sat down to grade, I thought that perhaps I might get a touch of that stripping (without a pole) done. I would just put a dollop of stripper on a shielded patche where it might could pull up some paint before freezing.

While dabbing on the stripper, I thought that maybe, before the frostbite set in, I might sand, just a bit, to see if one of my strategies for finishing the job might work. Sanding a tiny place might only take a minute; but the sandpaper was inside, next to the framing mess.

Well, you can see how the day went. I procrastinated on my procrastination, and then procrastinated on that, and on that, too.

I did get the mud off. I did get the online class graded, although that is cold comfort since about half of their finals still haven’t arrived in the mail. I did find the stud in the wall (one of Poe’s lesser-known pornographic pieces – I’ll stop with the bad puns now). I did get half of the framing mess cleaned up. I did get the pills into their days of the week pillbox, and the bottles into the newly neat medicine cabinet. I did take off a little bit more of that paint, too. Heck, I even wrote this blog post. But did I get to the office?

Now, I have to find new procrastination tasks because I’m planning on going to the gym a little later; or, maybe, I should use the gym to procrastinate on something else!

Epiphany #1

'Tis the season for epiphanies, is it not? During my Christmas vacation, I had two. I'm not sure what real impact they will have on my life, as they were, after all, stuff that I kind of already knew, I just finally saw the whole picture. In fact, epiphanies are much like looking at a Monet painting up close, then stepping back a few paces and then a few more until you realize, "ah, it's another damn lily pond!"

This is the first epiphany:

For the past few days, I’ve spent much time in Home Depot. First, I had to find Home Depot. This part of the country does not seem to put their big, superstores on display the way that they do in Texas. Texas tends to put anything “big” and “super sized” right next to the freeway, visible for at least five exits. Not so here. Here, they tend to hide their super sized stores off down a side street, so you can’t just hop on the freeway in any given direction and run into a Home Depot. You have to hunt for it. Thank goodness for Mapquest.

About ten or twelve years ago, I dated a guy who worked at Home Depot. His nickname in the Chain of Fools Whom I’ve Dated was “The Fascist.” He wasn’t really a fascist. He was a Republican. Why was I dating a Republican? I could say “sadomasochism,” but, sadly, he was an improvement over the Mean Drunk (recently rechristened the Killer), the Pathological Liar, and the Dog. Actually, now that I read over this, I see that perhaps he was just a small part of a larger pattern of sadomasochism in dating. Hence, I don’t date.

In any case, the Fascist worked at Home Depot and gave me some tips on shopping there. He said that, to get assistance, you either had to be a dude or a hot chick. I did not count as “hot” myself, he said, because I dressed either like a schoolteacher or like I had just worked out – and I didn’t dress hot for working out. To which I replied “Duh!” So, I had to beg for help back then. (Yes, I know, why was he dating someone he clearly did not consider hot? Well, because I can be classified as a bit cute, and because I was working on a PhD, I was a bit of a trophy for the unambitious.)

Things seem to have changed in the intervening years. Not because I’ve become “hot,” since I still dress the exact same way, but because Home Depot has adopted a non-discrimination policy toward their customers. Their salespeople are now rude and unavailable to everyone, regardless of hotness or maleness. At first, I thought I wasn’t getting help because I looked like, well, I was in the middle of a home improvement project and ran off to the store to pick up more stuff. Also, I left the Double-Ds back at home. Then, I noticed, even the MILFs had to chase – not flag down, but actually chase – salespeople for help.

But, I have digressed. What was I doing in Home Depot in the first place? I am, after all, an apartment renter. Well, that is the epilogue of my Christmas vacation.

If you will recall, I discovered that one should not drive up Lookout Mountain in a moving truck because one must eventually drive down Lookout Mountain in a moving truck. One must drive down twisty, winding roads with sheer drops and no guardrail on the going down side of the road. Logical, correct? Except if you do not think things through. Then, you think, “Hey! Lookout Mountain! Ruby Falls! Rock City! Let’s go see!” The next thing you know, you are half way up the Mountain, death grip on the steering wheel, riding the brake, and fearing that you just might get religion in the next mile or two. That may be why there were so many churches the higher up you go.

Still, what does that have to do with Home Depot? And why was I driving a moving truck? Didn’t I just move? Did I fail to fill you in on yet another major life change? No, I wasn’t changing residences again. In fact, I fully intend to be moved out of this apartment in a coffin. No more moving for me!

Instead, when I went to visit my family, my aunt said, “I have a couple of pieces of furniture that you might want.” Antiques, of course. One was an armoire that might hold Narnia in its depths. One was a rustic console table. One was a huge mirror frame, and one was a cypress fireplace surround. My aunt has impeccable taste, and I would probably never spend the money on a really nice piece of furniture. I certainly wouldn’t be able to afford the kind of furniture that she has, even her cast-offs. So, how could I refuse?

Thus, I flew out there, played with the nephew, visited the ancestral homeland on the River Road, and rented a truck to drive everything back. Smallish truck though it may have been, it was still a truck. Chattanooga was on my way back.

Still, Home Depot? Didn’t I say she has good taste? What would I need at Home Depot?

Well, that mirror frame needed a mirror, necessitating a trip for a big ole bathroom mirror to make the thing useful. Then, I needed some heavy-duty wire to hang it up, since the thing weighs a ton. That was trip number 2. Then, I needed to know how to find studs (no, not THAT kind – but I’m pretty woeful in that category as this story has shown) because the thing weighs a ton and drywall just won't do. That was trip number 3.

The mirror, however, was not the main event. The fireplace surround was what kept me going back for more and more and more.

You see, the surround is made of cypress, a lovely, pink wood from the swamps of Louisiana, resistant to bugs and rot. Unfortunately, the prior owners of this surround did not appreciate the aesthetic qualities of cypress. So, I have spent three days trying to get through a layer of latex paint, a layer of oil-based paint, a layer of white wash, and a layer of varnish. I have done this on my balcony, twenty stories up, in ever declining temperatures, with only rudimentary knowledge of what the hell I might be doing. In fact, the location on the twentieth floor probably keeps me safe from management eyes because I’m probably doing something completely in violation of my lease or illegal or at least frowned upon. I’m certainly making a huge mess, progressing at a glacial pace. Indeed, glacial is appropriate because the temperature must be five million degrees below zero.

In any case, this past week has pushed me to that epiphany that prohibits denial: I am impulsive. I never thought of myself as “impulsive.” “Rational,” “cautious,” even, on occasion “meticulous;” but all of those qualities seem to have waned. You see, I learned on this vacation that I can no longer deny the fact that I don’t think things through very well. I tend to get an idea and just jump in, usually over my head. While that may not be the wisest method of doing anything, I find that it is the only way that I will actually get anything new going or do anything at all interesting. If I stop to think things through, and make a plan, nothing will happen. I’ll get all caught up in the planning and fretting and worrying about every different contingency that I will forget to get around to do anything.

I hate New Year’s resolutions because they just become one more thing to potentially fail to do and feel bad about myself for failing. Nonetheless, I think I should make one. Not to reign in the impulsiveness, but to find a way to incorporate more forethought and planning into my impulses. That is, after all, one of the benefits of being grown-up: you can act on your desires, but save yourself from potential disasters.

Oh, and I also resolve not to drive up Lookout Mountain in a moving truck. That one, I can keep.

WTF?

Does anyone know what the story behind the type of Anonymous spam post that has a bunch of Asian-types of characters (although they are probably just gibberish), each forming seeing words that link to who knows what all? Most of my "comment deleted by administrator" incidences are me deleting these spams. Also, how does one stop them, or block them?