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Stumpage Reports
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Friday, February 28, 2003 :::
Bull City Photograph Tour
Last night for my preservation class, we went to the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University in Durham. I rode up there with UVA Debutant Girl and Could Be A Punk Rock Girl, which will be a whole 'nother blog.
The collection was fantastic, it is so much better to see the things in real life than reproduced real tiny in a book. There were original Matthew Brady photographs of Ulysses S. Grant and Civil War hospitals.
Some of the most impressive stuff were huge, they were huge, I mean big, photogravure prints of American Indians by Edward Curtis. There were also some big prints of western landscape photos by Timothy H. O'Sullivan and some beautiful platinum photographs of Yellowstone by William Henry Jackson. All these things were from the late 19th-century. These guys were hauling around those big old glass plate cameras and portable darkrooms on mules, falling into the Grand Canyon and everything.
There were also cyanotypes of Admiral Dewey's fleet in the Phillipines during the 1890's, these early 1900's color transparencies called autochromes that looked like they were taken yesterday.
Just too much, tintypes of black Civil War soldiers, 1850's photo albums, on and on.
They had pulled all this stuff out and put it in the rare book room, which is my idea of heaven even when its not filled up with beautiful old photographs.
Quote of the Day:
Mr. Jefferson has the honour to present his compliments to Mrs. Smith and to send her the two pair of Corsets she desired. He wishes they may be suitable, as Mrs. Smith omitted to send her measure. Should they be too small however, she will be so good as to lay them by a while. There are ebbs as well as flows in this world.
--- Thomas Jefferson to Abigal Adams Smith, January 15, 1787
::: posted by tom at 9:19 PM
Wednesday, February 26, 2003 :::
You Step Out of Line, the Man Come and Take You Away...
Some of my favorite anti-war protest signs, culled from a few different news stories...
South Alabama is against the war--get the freakin' hint
War is god's way of teaching Americans geography
Drunk frat boy drives country into ditch
Let�s Kill Saddam, Eat a Big Mac, and Watch The Bachelor
Frodo has failed! Bush has the ring!
Fighting terrorism with war is like fighting fire with gasoline
Quote of the Day:
In the new code of laws I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice, or representation.
--- Abigal Adams, letter to John Adams, March 31, 1776
::: posted by tom at 6:14 AM
Monday, February 24, 2003 :::
Fun With Slavery Part 1
This semester at school has been pretty blah, since the excitement of passing my oral exams I haven't been very pumped up about any of my classes. I've been plagued by migraines for a good month now which has played hell with my already screwed up sleep schedule. I'd rather stress out about finding a job and moving than think about class.
But a small spark was lit tonight. I have to do a major research paper for my Constitutional History class. I wanted to do something on the slavery debates during the Constitutional Convention in 1787. I let my professor talk me into doing something on the Constitution as an anti-slavery document. (Its usually viewed as a pro or indifferent to slavery document.) I floundered around with that for a couple weeks and didn't have much luck. I went back to my professor and told him I'm not so much interested in the rabid pro and anti-slavery guys, but the guys like Jefferson and George Mason who had slaves, but knew it was wrong and constantly struggled with it. So my working title is now "A Pithy Quote I've Yet To Find: Jefferson, Mason, Madison and the Morality of Slavery." I don't know why it took me so long to get to that topic, the paradox of American slavery and American freedom is something I'm fascinated with and could study for the rest of my life.
So tonight I've been happily marshalling my sources. I've been up to ears in books like American Slavery, American Freedom: the Ordeal of Colonial Virginia, A Necessary Evil? Slavery and the Debate Over the Constitution, and Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson.
Tomorrow will find me in the school library poring through the published letters of Jefferson and Madison. I love doing this shit and that's why I'm in school.
One thing that kills me is when after the revolution and these guys had to deal with some uppity slaves, they knew damn well where the slaves got these radical ideas about freedom and liberty. I ran across a great quote from James Madison. He was writing about an escaped slave he had located and was saying it was more trouble than it was worth to get the slave back. So I'll wrap this up and give you the...
Quote of the Day:
I have judged it most prudent not to force Billey back to Virginia even if it could be done. I am persuaded his mind is too thoroughly tainted to be a fit companion for fellow slaves in Virginia. I do not expect to get near the worth of him; but cannot think of punishing him by transportation merely for coveting that liberty for which we have paid the price of so much blood, and have proclaimed so often to be the right, & worthy the pursuit, of every human being.
--- James Madison to his father, September 8, 1783
::: posted by tom at 9:44 PM
Saturday, February 22, 2003 :::
Winter Showdown Inferno
In the wake of the nightclub fire in Rhode Island, I was wondering about the band "Great White," the name sounded vaguely familiar and I looked them up on All Music Guide. Apparently they are your basic 1980's heavy-metal-hair-band. Looking through their discography, I see they did a Led Zeppelin tribute called Great Zeppelin. The album cover for that one really has to be seen to be believed. Its a combination of Spinal Tap and something me and my friends would've thought was really cool back in the eighth or ninth grade.
I usually watch CNN almost everyday, although there's been a few times in the last couple weeks I've had to employ a self-imposed news boycott because Bush/Rumsfeld/Cheney/Himmler/Ashcroft kept pissing me off. I was watching this afternoon after I got home from work, and it just kills me how they distill every ongoing story/tragedy to a punchy two-word title complete with a logo. This Rhode Island fire is constantly billed as "Nightclub Inferno." The snowstorm last week was "Winter Wallop" and of course there is that old standby "Showdown Iraq." I wonder what they'll call the deal in Iraq once the real shooting starts. Perhaps "Persian Gulf War II: the Reckoning."
Quotes of the Day: (Some amusing quotes about history and historians)
"Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them."
--- Leo Tolstoy
"What is history but a fable agreed upon?"
--- Napoleon Bonaparte
"Historians are left forever chasing shadows, painfully aware of their inability ever to reconstruct a dead world in its completeness however thorough or revealing their documentation. We are doomed to be forever hailing someone who has just gone around the corner and out of earshot."
--- Simon Schama
"The past isn't over. It isn't even past."
--- William Faulkner
::: posted by tom at 5:53 PM
Wednesday, February 19, 2003 :::
Your First Born Child or An Eruptive Lesion?
When I used to work at the public library one of my jobs was updating a looseleaf binder with pictures and information on children awaiting adoption. These were older kids, not babies, and you could infer from the information on the children that they didn't come from the best of circumstances. It could be kind of sad, these listings would say things like "Brandy is eight years old and doesn't like to be touched." Looking for the humor in any situation, I noticed a lot of these kids had whacky names. So, I bring you....
Name of a Child Listed in the SEEUS Adoption Book
OR
A Disease or Disorder From the Dictionary of Archaic Medical Terms. Answers, and disease definitions, below.
1) Puba
2) Steluta
3) Abasia
4) Mutia
5) Perlèche
6) Dysuria
7) Voreia
8) Bejel
9) Morphew
10) Tayfon
Answers:
Child: 1, 2, 4, 7, 10
Disease: 3, 5, 6, 8, 9
Diseases:
Abasia - Hysterical inability to walk or stand
Perlèche - Cracked sores at the angles of the mouth
Dysuria - Difficulty in or painful urination
Bejel - Arabic term for syphilis
Morphew - A skin eruption
That Archaic Medical Terms Dictionary is really pretty fun to browse through. Where else can you find words or phrases like Scrumpox, Bladder in Throat, and Scrivener's Palsy?
Quote of the Day:
"I will not speak!" answered Hester, turning pale as death.
--- Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, 1850
::: posted by tom at 9:02 PM
Tuesday, February 18, 2003 :::
Back Out in Public: or, God What An Ugly Race
I was laid low by migraine headaches all weekend and iced in on Monday. Except for a trip to the library Saturday afternoon, today was my first venture out among other people for several days. I felt like a mole blinking in the sunlight as I walked to the bus stop.
Perhaps because I haven't been around people much for a few days, or because I knew I'd be desperate for blog material, I seemed to notice a lot of oddballs today and reveled in their eccentric behavior.
When I checked my email at a public terminal at the school library, I noticed I was between Cletus the Slack Jawed Yokel and a guy with a Lonnie Guinier hairdo. (No picture of her available, this will have to suffice.)
When I got to work the two Indian guys who do a lot of the computer stuff were chattering away in their native tongue. The fire alarms were being tested and strobes kept flashing and buzzers buzzing. I sat there in my own little world and happily arranged "NC Forestry Foundation: General Administration, Correspondence: Board of Directors, 1967." I'm not sure what the Board of Directors was up to during the summer of love, but Jones and Onslow counties NC, were about as far as you could get from Haight-Ashbury.
On the bus ride home, Happy Red-Haired Bus Driver Lady, was training a new bus driver. I got to pick up such useful nuggets as how not to lose the right-hand bus mirror to telephone poles and signposts. I also learned that TTA bus drivers often wave, but CAT bus drivers do not. In her words, "That is strange because we are all in the same business of hauling passengers from point A to point B."
When I was driving to class tonight I saw a well-dressed, neanderthal-browed man walk out of Starbucks. I immediately knew he had three names and was a serial killer.
Automation class was kind of boring tonight, both in content and attendees. Thursday night Archival Preservation class is much more interesting, both for blog nicknames and the attendees are much easier on the eyes, particularly UVA Debutant Girl and Could Be A Punk Rock Girl. Of course, Antebellum Manure Science Girl is always sorely missed.
Quote of the Day: (Lets get some fucking culture here)
Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor.
--- Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, ca. 1742-50
::: posted by tom at 8:36 PM
Monday, February 17, 2003 :::
You Dirty Old Dishrag You: Old Time Counting Out Rhymes
I don't know how many of you folks used counting out rhymes to pick out who would be "it" when you played hide-and-go seek. We usually used "Eeny Meeny Miny Mo, Catch a Tiger by the Toe..."
Here's some from a 1912 edition of the Raleigh News and Observer. I think they're funny because of some of the made up words, and of course being a pre-1990 1920 american newspaper, there's gotta be some racist stuff. They're funnier if you say them out loud, do it very loudly at work.
Onery, twoery, tickery tee,
Hannibal, Crackible, turnablee
Whing, whang, muskadan
Striddledum, straddledum, twenty-one
Wonery, towery, tickery seven;
Alibi, crackaby, ten and eleven;
Pin, pan, muskydan;
Tweedle-um, twoddle-um;
Twenty-wan, eerie, ourie, owrie,
You, are, out!
Little fishes in a brook,
Father caught them with his big hook,
Mother fried them in a pan,
Father ate them like a man.
Alina, maina, mona, mike;
Bassoloa, bona, strike;
Hare, ware, frown, back;
Halico, balico, wee, wo, wy, whack!
Wiar, briar, limber lock,
Sit and sing till twelve o'clock.
Clock fell down.
Mouse ran round.
O U T spells out, and be gone
You dirty old dishrag you.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
All good children go to heaven;
All the bad ones go below
To keep company with old black Joe.
Onezall, twozall
Ziggerzall, zan.
Bobtail Winnipecker,
Tee, taw, tan.
Harum, scarum,
Sinctum, sanctum,
Washington Buck
Maybe that was all a little lame, desperate for material here.
Quote of the Day:
We had about 12 negroes did wilfully drown themselves, and others starv'd themselves to death; for 'tis their belief that when they die they return home to their own country and friends again. I have been inform'd that some commanders have cut off the legs and arms of the most wilful, to terrify the rest, for they believe if they lose a member, the cannot return home again.
--- Voyage of the Hannibal, 1693 - 1694
::: posted by tom at 12:18 AM
Friday, February 14, 2003 :::
Give Peace A Chance
I've been following the buildup to war with Iraq with mixture of anger and sadness. I was ready to post an hysterical screed against the Bush administration yesterday but decided not to, I was feeling so negative already I didn't want to add to it. On occasion I'm an out-and-out CNN junkie, but I've barely been able to watch the news for more than five minutes this week. Lots of Arthur and Clifford the Big Red Dog these past afternoons.
So, rather than ranting about George Bush, the headlong rush to an unjust war, John Ashcroft, the shredding of the Bill of Rights, etc here's a little history lesson, something you can always count on from this blog. I've heard people wonder why we can't have war again like World War II where the whole country was behind the war. WWII was actually an exception. Of course there were pacifists and conscientious objectors against WWII. All other U.S. wars featured large, vocal, sometimes in the majority, groups of anti-war protestors.
American Revolution (1775 - 1783) Hard figures are hard to come by, but many historians estimate over 50% of the people living in America were against the Revolution. Americans fought Americans with a ferocity unequaled by the Civil War, including torture and massacres. This was particularly bad in North and South Carolina.
The War of 1812 (1812 - 1815) Another unpopular war. As a result of the effect on the New England shipping business, Connecticut and some other states of the region convened a convention in Hartford in 1814 to consider, among other things, secession. News of the Treaty of Ghent short circuited their plans and to this day no one knows if they would have gone through with it.
The Mexican War (1846 - 1848) Many people saw this war for the imperialistic land grab that it was. Henry David Thoreau penned his famous essay Civil Disobedience while in jail for refusing to pay his taxes to support the war. In 1848 Abraham Lincoln, serving in the House of Represenatives, made his famous "bloody spot" speech, exhorting President Polk to show the exact spot where the Mexicans first spilled American blood. This speech helped to kill Lincoln's political career for awhile.
The Civil War (1861 - 1865) Major draft riots in New York in 1863. Lincoln suspended habeus corpus and threw anti-war newspapermen and politicians in jail without trial or indictments. If Sherman had not captured Atlanta in the fall of 1864, there is a good chance George McCellan could have been elected president on the Democratic peace platform. Many people consider low southern moral at home contributed as much to the south's loss as their battlefield defeats.
World War I (1917 - 1918) As early as 1915, during America's period of nuetrality, groups such as the American Union against Militarism formed to challenge Woodrow Wilson's growing war budget. Many socialists, the most famous was Eugene Debs, protested America's involvement in the European struggle. Wilson won reelection in 1916 with the slogan "He Kept Us Out of the War," then declared war against Germany six months later.
To be honest, I can't find anything right now on anti-war movements during the Korean War, I'm sure that wasn't a very popular war though. I don't think I need to instruct anyone on anti-war sentiment during the Vietnam War.
So all these anti-war protestors are keeping alive an American tradition that was around before there was an America.
Quote of the Day:
The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man [Lincoln's emphasis] should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.
--- Abraham Lincoln to William Herndon, February 15, 1848.
::: posted by tom at 10:52 PM
Wednesday, February 12, 2003 :::
It Will Always Be the Pine Knob Music Theater: or, Concert Memories of an Old Fart
I started out writing about a Talking Heads concert I attended at the Pine Knob Music Theater in 1983, but while surfing around looking for info on the venue, I found they had changed the name to the DTE Energy Music Theatre. I started thinking about that place and decided to do a entry on Pine Knob instead.
Pine Knob was "shed" type concert place located north of Detroit. My salad days there were the late 70's to the early 80's back when sheds were uncommon and arenas did not have corporate names. The lawn seats were on a series of small hills and when I started going there they cost $5, seats in the covered area were maybe $8 or $10. Later the prices rose to the astronomical level of $10 and $15.
The first concert I ever went to was at Pine Knob, it was 1976, I was 13 years old and it was an afternoon matinee performance by The Beach Boys. It was during the "Brian is Back" tour, so I'm glad I got to see them with Brian Wilson.
Of course, a few years later, the big appeal of the place was the fact that no matter how old you were, you could take in as much booze as you liked as long as there was no glass. We literally took kegs to concerts. Of course this, combined with "Who's at Pine Knob tonight? I don't know lets spend $6 on a lawn ticket and find out" led to lots of mayhem and some pretty bad concerts. It wasn't all drunken bacchanalias though. I remember being very clear-headed seeing the Talking Heads on their 1983 Stop Making Sense tour, also the second time I saw Santana there, and when I saw The Grateful Dead pre Touch of Grey and all the Jerry-Come-Latelies.
The Dead show was interesting, I didn't know much about them and tagged along with some guys. I had gotten in trouble coming home a few nights earlier from a ZZ Top concert (one of the above "who's at Pine Knob drunken messes") so I kept my act together that night. There were six of us, we took along a quarter barrel of Lowenbrau and three of us took acid and three of us didn't. I was in the "didn't" trio. The three "dids" sat in a row on the hill in front of us and there was no communication between the two groups that night.
I could go on all night about that place, but I promise I won't. It was just so much fun, we were often up to no good and doing things that would've given our parents strokes, but looking back there was an air of innocence and fun. This was when groups like Fleetwood Mac, Peter Frampton, Boston, were selling buttloads of albums that everybody was buying. They would play 3 to 5 nights in a row at Pine Knob and everyone who wanted to see them got to go.
But now its the damn GTE Energy Dome or whatever and you probably can't even take a fucking umbrella or blanket in there. I was little more confessional about the drugs and drinking than might be wise for this somewhat public forum, but the hell with it, its true and it happened a long time ago.
Quote of the Day: (In keeping with the Colonial Suffering theme that seems to be developing)
The Starving Time: But that which was most sad and lamentable was, that in two or three months' time half of their company died, especially in January and February, being the depth of winter, and wanting houses and other comforts; being infected with the scurvy and other diseases which this long voyage and their incommodate condition had brought upon them. So as there died some times two or three of a day in the foresaid time, that of 100 and odd persons, scarce fifty remained.
--- William Bradford, Of Pymouth Plantation c1630
::: posted by tom at 10:50 PM
Tuesday, February 11, 2003 :::
This Hallowed Ground, or: Civil War Battlefields and Sites I've Been To
Abraham Lincoln Birthplace, KY
Andersonville, GA
Antietam, MD
Appomattox Court House, VA
Bennett House. Durham, NC
Chancellorsville, VA
Chattanooga, TN
Chickamauga, GA
Cold Harbor, VA
Fort Fisher. Wilmington, NC
Fort Gaines. Mobile, AL
Fort Macon. Beaufort, NC
Fort Morgan. Mobile, AL
Fort Pickens. Pensacola, FL
Fort Pulaski. Savannah, GA
Franklin, TN
Fredericksburg, VA
Gaines Mill, VA
Gettysburg, PA
Hampton Roads, VA
Harpers Ferry, WV
Lexington, VA
Malvern Hill, VA
Millwood Plantation Ruins. Columbia, SC
New Market, VA
Petersburg, VA
Robert E. Lee House. Arlington, VA
Seven Pines, VA
Spotsylvania Court House, VA
Stones River. Murfreesboro, TN
Vicksburg, MS
Wilderness, VA
Winchester, VA
When I was mentally making up this list while driving to class, I thought it would be a lot longer. Looking at this list, it is painfully obvious I need to go to Shiloh, , Manassas, , and Fort Sumter.
Quote of the Day:
A wicked fellow, given up to bestiality, fearing to be taken by the hand of justice, fled to Long Island, and there was drowned. He had confessed to some that he was so given up to that abomination that he never saw any beast go before him but he lusted after it.
--- John Winthrop, The Journal of John Winthrop, December 1640.
::: posted by tom at 10:42 PM
Monday, February 10, 2003 :::
The Dead Drummer Boy: or, Ain't No Way to Get High and My Mouth is So Dry That I Can't Speak
I've been dry for blog material for days. I guess thinking up phrases like "The Transformation of Cannibalistic Myth" sucked my creative juices dry.
Today I went to Reader's Corner, a local used bookstores. Some days I go there and can find nothing, other days I could spend $200, today was a potential $200 day, but I only spent $18. One great find, only $4.95, was a book from 1955 called We Were There at the Battle of Gettysburg by Alida Sims Malkus. Its a young adult / juvenile book with a great dustjacket with a semi-lurid painting of a little boy giving a blood-soaked rebel a drink of water while Pickett's charge roars in the background. Searching Google for something to link the title to, I found out there's a whole series of these things, I'll have to keep my eyes open.
Speaking of series, I finally took the plunge into The Photographic History of the Civil War. Its a ten-volume set originally published in 1911 and its been reprinted a bunch since. I bought volume 9 today, "Poetry and Eloquence From the Blue and Gray." I don't have this set but I know it is inevitable I will get it so I grabbed this one, again only $4.95 and you don't see this volume much. Besides photos of dead bodies, wreckage, and cemeteries there are tons of the maudlin poems and songs that were popular then. I can probably use some of this for my Confederate Monuments research. I haven't gone through the whole book but hopefully "The Dead Drummer Boy" is in there.
The other book I got was The History of Photography by Beaumont Newhall. My archival preservation teacher had recommended it for supplemental reading and it was only $7.00 so I grabbed it, lotta good stuff in there.
So thats it, adventures in the bookstore today. Also worked at the school archives, went to Constitutional History class, and had dinner with She Who Shall Not Be Named.
Quote of the Day:
On the twentieth of February 1676, came the Indians with great numbers upon Lancaster. Their first coming was about sunrising; hearing the noise of some guns, we looked out; several houses were burning, and the smoke ascending to heaven. At length they came and beset our own house, and quickly it was dolefulest day that ever mine eyes saw.
--- Mary Rowlandson, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, 1682.
Reading:
The Sources of Antislavery Constitutionalism in America, 1670 - 1848 by William Wiecek
::: posted by tom at 10:14 PM
Friday, February 07, 2003 :::
Friday Night Pop Quiz
Actual, real articles from the scholarly, peer- reviewed Journal of Popular Culture,
OR
Complete bullshit I sat here and made up. Answers below.
1) Staking Her Claim: Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Transgressive Woman Warrior
2) Gender Conflict and Coercion on A & E's An Evening at the Improv
3) The Virgin and the Whore: Images of Women and Intra-Gender Politics in WKRP in Cincinnatti
4) "Is This Going to be Another Bug-hunt?": S-F Tradition Versus Biology-as-Destiny in James Cameron's Aliens
5) Born in East L.A.: Cheech as the Chicano Moses
6) "Yo! She-bitch! Let's Go!" : Sam Raimi's Evil Dead Films as Feminist Manifesto
7) The Passion of St. Anthony: Hannibal Lechter as Christ Figure and the Transformation of Cannibalisitic Myth
8) Frankenstein As Founding Myth in Gary Larson's The Far Side
9) The Professor and Mary Ann: Male and Female Eunuchs in 1960s Television Comedy
10) Where No One Knows Your Name: Cheers as Existential Nightmare
Answers:
Real: 1, 2, 4, 5, 8
Fake: 3, 6, 7, 9, 10
Quote of the Day:
Like one that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
--- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
::: posted by tom at 9:29 PM
Thursday, February 06, 2003 :::
Hot Damn I Passed My Oral Exams!
This afternoon I took and passed my oral exams to help fulfill the requirement for my degree. I will not give a blow-by-blow account here, but of course I have to share a few highlights (and lowlights).
To start off, I had a raging migraine this morning, I'm starting to get a cold, and I had to schlep five blocks in the sleet to get to campus to take the exam. The people on my committee consisted of my advisor, who's a big slavery guy, had him for a couple classes and we get along great (hereafter referred to as "Doc"). Plus a guy that works at the archives I have had two classes with and another history professor.
The First Question, and My Worst Moment:
Doc: When preparing a documentary edition, there are three methods of transcription you can use. What are the three methods and what are the strengths and weaknesses of them?
Me: Uhhhh....uhm....there's literal transcription...and....the other two!
Doc: Thats OK, you don't have to name them, just explain them. (Thank god thank god)
In Retrospect, The Fat, Slow One Across the Plate I Smacked Out of the Ballpark:
Doc: I've been told slavery was a large part of the southern identity and that it may have led to the Civil War. Could you elaborate on that?
Me: blah blah blah blah.....
My Favorite Part:
Doc (interrupting while I was answering the above questions): What did southerners think of blacks with guns?
Me, answering instantly without missing a beat: It was their worst nightmare. ...and went on with what I was talking about before.
They all said I did great, Doc even said it was one of the best exams he'd given. It sure as hell didn't feel that way while I was taking it. I'm glad I got it out of the way early in the semester.
Quote of the Day:
In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.
--- Ernest Hemingway, Indian Camp
::: posted by tom at 9:43 PM
Tuesday, February 04, 2003 :::
Random Impressions of Class Tonight
Automation class tonight. Acronym city. We're talking about APPM (Archives, Personal Papers, and Manuscripts), which is a way to describe archival holdings using MARC (MAchine Readable Cataloging). All very dry stuff, but I guess we have to know it. Most archives are moving toward EAD (Encoded Archival Description) which I'm learning how to do at my job, it will be covered later in the class.
Cute Little Textile Library Chick gave me a couple packs of cigarettes tonight. She's been trying to quit for two years and has been bumming cigarettes off me for two years. She didn't have to buy me the cigarettes, but it was nice.
South Carolina Farm Girl's stomach was roaring and boinging throughout class. Usually I fill that role but I actually had dinner before class tonight.
Funny and Cool-Sounding Names Used as Examples in Archives, Personal Papers, and Manuscripts by Steven Hensen: (all real people)
Baron Quintin Hogg Hailsham of St. Marylebone
Adolf Hungry Wolf
Bushrod Washington
Theodosius Purland
and the title I always wanted for myself...
Queen Caroline Amelia Elizabeth, consort of George VI, King of Great Britian
Quote of the Day:
On the 1st of February, having consumed the last morsel, the captain and the three other men that remained with him, were reduced to the necessity of casting lots. It fell upon Owen Coffin to die, who with great fortitude and resignation submitted to his fate.
--- Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex by Owen Chase (1821)
::: posted by tom at 11:17 PM
Monday, February 03, 2003 :::
Dude, You Were Wasted Last Night: or, Overheard On Campus
Stumpage Reports offers its readers many services: long-winded essays on slavery and american history, quotes of the day, and weird little things I think and see throughout the day. Another bonus for the public, is that in my unique position as The Only Guy On Campus Without A Baseball Hat And Cell Phone, I have my finger on the pulsing carotid artery of American college students. With that in mind, here is a list of recent things I've overheard on campus. A quick Monday morning bus ride could beget three pages of "Dude you were so wasted last weekend," so I've eschewed remarks of that nature.
"Legends is the only decent club and thats a gay bar so I stay home and drink."
"I'm walking out of the library and talking to you on my cell phone." (Spoken by someone walking out of the library while talking on their cell phone)
"Its shitty. And my abs hurt."
"I have a movie script I'm developing. Its based on a play by Sartre."
"The elves participated in the war of the ring in a way that was totally inappropriate."
Quote of the Day:
"We don't have any history of that period, because the clay tablets contain only information about what they did every day."
--- a tour guide describing some clay tablets at the Heraklion Museum, Crete, 1976.
Reading:
"Photographs as Historical Evidence: Early Texas Oil" by Walter Rundell, Jr., in The American Archivist, Vol. 41, No. 4, October 1978.
"Public History: Its Origins, Nature, and Prospects" by Robert Kelley, in The Public Historian, Vol. 1, No. 1, Fall 1978.
Slavery in the Structure of American Politics 1765 - 1820 by Donald L. Robinson
::: posted by tom at 10:39 PM
Saturday, February 01, 2003 :::
Time For Krispy Kreme Amid the Horror
Like everyone else I watched the coverage of the space shuttle crash today. Like everyone else, I thought it was a big tragedy. Like a lot of people, I remember the Challenger crash, and I even remember my parents waking me up when Apollo 11 landed on the moon. I don't remember watching it on television, I was about six years old, but I remember my parents' excitement as they woke me up and told me to remember this.
Unlike most people, I'm gonna share a story about the one moment during the crash coverage today when I burst out laughing.
It was about 30 minutes after it happened. The guy who happened to be on CNN when it happened was juggling a bunch of stuff: trying to tell viewers what was going on, talking to local yokels who saw the crash, showing video, etc. Then for about 5 seconds the camera flipped to White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux, one of my favorite news vixens the more competent journalists on television. Obviously, it was an error when they switched to her. She was standing if front of the White House stuffing a doughnut in her face. The last second her eyes kinda bugged out and she looked right at the camera, then they cut away.
I thought it was funny, I burst out laughing, and thats my space shuttle crashing story.
Quote of the Day:
But he instantly saw that it would be impossible for him to escape from the regiment. It inclosed him. And there were iron laws of tradition and law on four sides. He was in a moving box. As he perceived this fact it occured to him that he had never wished to come to the war. He had not enlisted of his free will. He had been dragged by the merciless government. And now they were taking him out to be slaughtered.
--- Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage
Reading:
Archives & Manuscripts: Administration of Photographic Collections by Mary Lynn Ritzenthaler, Gerald J. Munoff, and Margery S. Long.
"Public History and the Academy" by Leslie H. Fishel, Jr.
::: posted by tom at 11:07 PM
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