Dang

A sweet moment of bike lit from my friend judy b.:

“Straight to My Heart”:

I know the potholes on this block like I know the piles of magazines in my living room and I slalom around them with the same practiced grace I navigate my own neglected pylons with and uttering the same silent admonition that “someone” should make the way more safe for my traveling.

The rest: It’s here.

Leap Day

A family legend that I believe is true: Our grandfather, Edward Daniel Hogan, was born on Leap Day. Our grandmother, Anne O’Malley, was born in 1898, and hearing that I always figured Ed must have been born in 1896 or 1892. But having seen his grave, finally, and having found him in the census, I see the real date was 1888.

In 1930, he was listed as a bank auditor, probably at the First National Bank of Chicago; our stern grandmother is listed unsoberly as “Annie,” and her occupation is clear from the presence of three children in the downstairs flat at 8332 South May Street: our mom, who was just four months old the day the census enumerator visited, and her brothers Bill — three years old — and John, who was two. Upstairs were Ed’s parents, Timothy J. (listed as “freight clerk-railroad”); Annie, his wife, who was actually named Anniestacia; and Ed’s sisters, Catherine and Betty. Catherine was 30 and her occupation is listed as “stenographer-abbatoir”; I’ve always heard she worked for Armour–you know, the meat company–but this is the first I’ve heard that stenographers worked in abbatoirs. Betty is listed as an office clerk at a bank, and I don’t know which one.

It’s always a little thrilling and a little strange to encounter family characters in a setting like this. Some of them we’ve only heard about. We never knew Mom’s dad and granddad or her brother John — they died long before we came along. But I do have memories of his mother, Annie, who still lived in that upstairs flat when we were very young. And much clearer memories of the rest of them.

Ed, though–today is the twenty-ninth passing of his actual birth date. I think. If he were in any position to appreciate it, I’d tell him happy birthday.

Technorati Tags:

In the Stacks

Librarybook022908

I’ve discovered since I (re-)started school at Cal last month that its main library is amazing. I’ve had a couple topics to read about that are pretty arcane, and I’ve been pleased to discover that the library has the books I’ve been looking for and, to my surprise, they’re all available in the stacks. (The stacks themselves are another subject: since the last time I frequented the library, a gigantic underground annex was built, and that’s where all the books are now.)

I’m looking for material on reactions in Ireland to the American Civil War. One reason: About 150,000 Irish immigrants and Irish Americans served in the war. And for another: The Irish in America turn out to have been, in general, pretty unsympathetic to the idea of emancipation; in fact, “pretty unsympathetic” could be seen as a euphemism for “virulently racist.” Exhibit A for that might be the New York Draft Riots in 1863.

Anyway, I started looking for stuff on this subject, and to my surprise I found a book that deals explicitly with this topic: “Celts, Catholics and Copperheads,” a 1968 book (actually available online) by someone named Joseph M. Hernon, Jr. It’s a short book, perhaps a good fit a narrow topic. I checked with the UC-Berkeley library catalog, and sure enough, it was listed. Not only that, but it was on the shelf. I went and checked it out yesterday.

After I got home, I took a look at the loan slip just out of curiosity about how many hands this book has passed through. There are two slips in the book; the one pictured above is pasted over the original. The slips show the book came into the library in 1969 and was checked out four or five times in its first three years in the collection. Until yesterday, it had been checked out six times in the last 36 years, with gaps of three, two, ten, eleven, two and two years between borrowers. The last time it was checked out was six years ago. From the wear it has suffered, you would guess the book has had a more active life; maybe it spent some time in the home of a graduate student whose kids used it as a Frisbee.

I’m sure there are plenty of volumes in that big vault of books that have been borrowed even less frequently. It makes me wonder about the volume of library patronage on one hand and wonder at the commitment to keep all this stuff available. Maybe I’ll be able to dig up some library statistics; too big a project for this morning, though.

Technorati Tags:

Guest Observation: Bicycle Poem

Saw this on The Writer’s Almanac this morning. If you quote it or reproduce it, note that it’s by Deborah Slicer (of whom I know nothing), and it’s Copyright 2003. It’s also good to note, as the Almanac does, that the volume in which it appears, “The White Calf Kicks,” may be purchased via Amazon.com (support your local poet!).

Outside of Richmond, Virginia, Sunday

(Deborah Slicer, Copyright 2003)

It’s the kind of mid-January afternoon—

the sky as calm as an empty bed,

fields indulgent,

black Angus finally sitting down to chew—

that makes a girl ride her bike up and down the same muddy track of road

between the gray barn and the state highway

all afternoon, the black mutt

with the white patch like a slap on his rump

loping after the rear tire, so happy.

Right after Sunday dinner

until she can see the headlights out on the dark highway,

she rides as though she has an understanding with the track she’s opened up in

the road,

with the two wheels that slide and stutter in the red mud

but don’t run off from under her,

with the dog who knows to stay out of the way but to stay.

And even after the winter cold draws tears,

makes her nose run,

even after both sleeves are used up,

she thinks a life couldn’t be any better than this.

And hers won’t be,

and it will be very good.

Bicycle Poem

Saw this on The Writer’s Almanac this morning. If you quote it or reproduce it, note that it’s by Deborah Slicer (of whom I know nothing), and it’s Copyright 2003. It’s also good to note, as the Almanac does, that the volume in which it appears, “The White Calf Kicks,” may be purchased via Amazon.com (support your local poet!).

Outside of Richmond, Virginia, Sunday

(Deborah Slicer, Copyright 2003)

It’s the kind of mid-January afternoon—

the sky as calm as an empty bed,

fields indulgent,

black Angus finally sitting down to chew—

that makes a girl ride her bike up and down the same muddy track of road

between the gray barn and the state highway

all afternoon, the black mutt

with the white patch like a slap on his rump

loping after the rear tire, so happy.

Right after Sunday dinner

until she can see the headlights out on the dark highway,

she rides as though she has an understanding with the track she’s opened up in

the road,

with the two wheels that slide and stutter in the red mud

but don’t run off from under her,

with the dog who knows to stay out of the way but to stay.

And even after the winter cold draws tears,

makes her nose run,

even after both sleeves are used up,

she thinks a life couldn’t be any better than this.

And hers won’t be,

and it will be very good.

Paper

Some weeks back, I think I mentioned that I’m back in school, trying to earn my history degree at UC-Berkeley. I’ll talk more about it soon, I promise. About the dull class that has turned out to be much more engaging than I imagined it could be during that first week. About the very challenging class on linguistics that has me thinking about the merits of going for a pass/not pass grade. About the oddly off-putting experience of a sociology-type class looking at the phenomenon of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, and how I’ve dropped that one.

But for now, this: The week before last, I had to turn in my first paper since the Carter administration. The class is Irish history–I half feel like the native Parisian taking Elementary French, but that’s another story. The paper was to be a reflection on the record that Alexis de Tocqueville, the 19th century political sociologist, left of a trip he took through Ireland in 1835. (Do I hear pulses speeding up out there in blogland?)

Technorati Tags:

Continue reading “Paper”

Bicentennial Moment

From my brother John, a good writeup (from the Associated Press, by way of MSNBC) on the upcoming bicentennial of the birth of a president who served from 1861 through 1865. No, not the one you’re thinking of.

“It hasn’t been easy getting people excited about celebrating the 200th birthday of that tall, gaunt, bearded, Kentucky-bred president who was born in a log cabin and went on to lead his people through a bloody civil war.”

Enough suspense. We’re talking about Jefferson Davis. Doing a quick Web sift for a related item, I stumbled across this item in the Andalusia, Alabama, Star-News. In a column of local goings-on, which is worth reading for the strong local flavor, there is an extended account of a recent Davis bicentennial event: a re-enactment of his swearing in as president of the Confederacy in Montgomery.

Among the many gently disquieting observations delivered in the Star-News column is this one:

“The program was a long one, presided over by Mrs. Napier, who runs the White House of the Confederacy and is a great-niece of Douglas Southall Freeman, most famous biographer of Robert E. Lee, whose bicentennial was celebrated last year.

“Mrs. Napier spoke of ‘presentism,’ which she defined as ‘imposing today’s values on the past’ as a means of judgment. She did not favor that.”

You know, I love the code. We are not to judge the past by today’s values. By which the speaker means “we shouldn’t judge slavery, and the South’s embrace of it, by the enlightened standards of 2008.” Slavery was just a fact of life in the South, and no one today has the right to judge that. Uh huh.

It’s true that we Americans are mostly a little shortsighted about slavery and its legacies. It thrived in the North, for instance, and was only gradually outlawed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It’s true, too, that when the Civil War came one of the great bastions of pro-Southern and anti-emancipation sentiment was New York City. The brutal reality of slavery darkened the entire Union.

But there I go, calling slavery “brutal.” That’s just modern values judging the well-meaning gentlefolk of yesteryear.

Except, of course, it’s not: The contemporary reality of antebellum America, and of the world beyond, was full of recognition that slavery was barbaric and ought to be ended. That doesn’t mean the question was ever simple. But revisionism aside, that’s why that damned war was fought–based on 19th century values, not something we ginned up in the 1960s.

Now: Applying 1860s values to today? That I have a problem with. (And so does novelist John Scalzi, who over the years has made a cause out of puncturing latter-day delusions about the nature of the Confederacy.)

Technorati Tags:

The Bicycle Menace

From the San Francisco Chronicle’s “Wayback Machine” feature today:

“1933:

“March 1: The bicycle menace at last has reached police attention. It has been growing week by week. Last week it reached its climax when 600 wild-eyed women between the ages of 16 and 60 cut loose in Golden Gate Park and gave pedestrians and motorists the jitters. Folks complained that their lives were no longer safe in the park, with the two-wheeled menace everywhere. Officer Thomas Smith was given charge of the delicate job of tagging the rubber-tired rounders. Equipped with a grain sack filled with tags, he mounted his Barley motor car, slipped in the clutch and cantered off to do his duty. At sundown, he was still out distributing his billets-doux to the ladies of the handlebar and sprocket club.”

One Candidate

Time out for a campaign sideswipe:

One of Hillary Clinton’s stock lines–part of reminding us that there’s only one candidate in the race who will be able to find her way to the White House bathroom in the dark on Inauguration Night–is this: There’s one candidate in the race who knows what it’s like to do hand-to-hand combat with Republicans and who’s ready to put on the brass knuckles again. (As delivered in Youngstown, Ohio, earlier this week, the line was: “One of us has faced serious Republican opposition in the past. And one of us is ready to do it again.”)

Is that a note she really wants to sound? I can’t believe there’s anyone in the Democratic Party, aside from James Carville, who is eager to see a Clinton rolling around in the muck with the Republicans. The memory evokes the image of a president who parsed and prevaricated while his enemies sharpened their knives.

Besides, Clinton’s claim to be such a tough campaigner is being put to the test by the one candidate in the race she is implying is too soft to deal with the Republicans.

Infamous Scribblers

On the occasion of George Washington’s (Gregorian-corrected) birthday, this memorable description of the press:

“The hopelessness with which Washington ended his presidency was obvious in the way he described to [Alexander] Hamilton his plan to retire. He wrote that he had ‘a disinclination to be longer buffeted in the public prints by a set of infamous scribblers.’ He needed retirement, he told another correspondent, just to make bearable what he predicted would be a short trip to his death.”

(From: “Our Founding Lame Duck,” in the Times earlier this week.)