Category: History

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Revolutions

Finally got around to watching the History Channel’s “French Revolution” documentary. As a general outline of the events, it’s an OK hour and 28 minutes of programming. Yes, it’s history that’s been tarted up with lame live-action voice-over sequences, hundreds of scenes of the guillotine falling (most accompanied by a shot of a blood-like substance spreading on the pavement beneath) and a sometimes ponderous and breathless script (“And then, the sans culottes really got their croissants in an uproar and treated the royal family very rudely” or, “If there was one thing Robespierre couldn’t stand, it was moderates — especially moderates who had bad table manners”).

There was one little detail when the documentary is dealing with the years leading to the revolution (usually with scenes of peasants scrabbling in the snow for branches to gnaw on) that I wonder about. The script says that Louis No. 16 wanted to support the American Revolution largely to settle scores with the British. And to do so, he approved spending 2 billion livres (the scripts says two thousand million, which is the same thing), enough to feed about 7 million of his subjects for a year. The claim is made that the deficit incurred in supporting the Americans eventually bankrupted the French government and threw the national economy into a state of collapse. On one level, what an irony. On another — and I know before I say it the parallel is superficial — what an interesting analogy for our leaders’ apparent willingness to spend whatever it takes in Iraq. You wonder what the ruinous consequences for us could be,

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Revolutionary Advertising

The national edition of The New York Times, the one that lands on the doorstep here in the post-revolutionary community of Berkeley, had an interesting advertising insert Monday morning. It consisted of four broadsheet pages, the first of which appears thus: Big bold type: “For Two Hours It Won’t Kill You To Love The French.” Then there’s a big bold simple picture of a blood-red guillotine against a blue background. Then the type again: “The French Revolution.” It’s a come-on for a History Channel documentary on the subject stated above that showed tonight. That’s striking, or strange, in its own right. But the ad itself is more striking, or stranger, still.

The following three pages outline, in slightly smaller but still bold type an outline of the revolution, starting with the declaration, “You’ll love the French Revolution. It speaks freedom fluently.” The copy, in trying to convey the revolutionary spectacle, achieves outright oddness: “When the prison governor, de Launey, gave the order to fire on them, their rage achieved its full ignition in what is known as the storming of the Bastille.”

The ad copy ends, after explaining that 17.000 French men and women were guillotined in the Terror, by saying: “Liberté. Egalité. Fraternité. They’re the 3 most expensive words in French history. And, in any mans [sic] language, you’ll love that the French stood up and, without complaint, paid the price.”

Huh? Paid the price … without complaint? Not to be overly persnickety, this starts to read like something from the George W. Bush press operation, except as well all know that’s not possible because in the Bush universe the French are just one small step above true evildoers. More significant, that little declaration at the end leaves out the little matter of what followed the revolution: Napoleon running amok across sundry exotic destinations in Europe and elsewhere for the nearly two decades. Maybe the show will try to explain how the revolution’s energy was channeled in that direction.

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Snowflake Guy

Snowflake2_1

Kate pointed out an article in the January issue of Smithsonian magazine about Wilson Alwyn “Snowflake” Bentley. He was a Vermont farm boy who got to fiddling around with a view camera and microscope in the 1880s so that he could make images of snowflakes — or more accurately, the ice crystals that make up the flakes. And that,  to fit a lifetime into a sentence, is how we know that no two snowflakes are exactly alike.

Having never heard this guy’s name before, what’s a little surprising is how well known a figure he is and how much information about him is floating around. The historical society in his hometown, Jericho, Vermont, has a Snowflake Bentley site dedicated to his work (with a small but dazzling gallery of some of the original images. Dover has republished the book Bentley published just before he died in 1931, “Snow Crystals.” Since Bentley was curious about other precipitation phenomena — he published his research on raindrops — weather scientists eventually discovered his work and celebrated it, and one has written a biography, “The Snowflake Man: A Biography of Wilson A. Bentley.” There’s a critically well-received children’s book about him.

The reason for all the attention is apparent when you look at his work. He was meticulous and scientific in his approach, and he was convinced he was revealing something profound:

“Under the microscope, I found that snowflakes were miracles of beauty; and it seemed a shame that this beauty should not be seen and appreciated by others. Every crystal was a masterpiece of design and no one design was ever repeated., When a snowflake melted, that design was forever lost. Just that much beauty was gone, without leaving any record behind.”

(Image and quote from www.snowflakebentley.com.)

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Fighting Evolutionary Terrorism

Link: Salon.com News | The new Monkey Trial.

Salon (subscription, unfortunately, required) has a superb long review on the political advances that anti-evolution forces have made in public schools across the country. The piece focuses on the struggle in a Pennsylvania school district over the school board’s decision last year to order the teaching of “intelligent design” in high school biology classes. ID, as proponents call it, is calculated to undermine the teaching of evolutionary biology by pointing to cases that evolution (or physics) has a tough time explaining, thus suggesting that a higher creative intelligence was involved (guess whose?). ID is largely designed to get the Bible’s take on creation into science classes without overstepping the constitutional ban on teaching religion in public schools.

The Salon story contains one breathtaking quote from a state legislator in Missouri that says volumes about how extreme and cockeyed anti-evolutionary thinking can become:

“Speaking to the [New York] Times, state Rep. Cynthia Davis seemed to compare opponents of intelligent design to al-Qaida. ‘It’s like when the hijackers took over those four planes on Sept. 11 and took people to a place where they didn’t want to go,’ she said. ‘I think a lot of people feel that liberals have taken our country somewhere we don’t want to go. I think a lot more people realize this is our country and we’re going to take it back.’ ”

Oh, yeah — it’s just like that.

The reason orthodoxy of any stripe — religious, political, scientific — is not a good thing is that by definition it promotes rigid thinking and suppresses inquiry. The brand of Christian fundamentalism active in U.S. politics today is a menace because it insists on imposing the beliefs of many on all. But it doesn’t do for those whose world view is based on the fruits of the scientific method to laugh off the beliefs of others, either.

This is more a question of attitude than knowledge. I’m not suggesting that Judeo-Christian creationism be put on the same footing as science (if that kind of thing’s going to get into the classroom, I’m afraid I’ll have to insist on equal science-class time for the Norse creation story, the Navajo story, and the Celtic explanations for the world). But I do think those teaching science would be well-served by a sense of humility in approaching their task. Scientific knowledge is evolving. What comes to be regarded as established truth in one era — for instance, the origins and form of the universe, the nature and structure of matter, or our understanding of the processes that cause earthquakes (and trigger tsunamis) — can and often is unraveled by further inquiry.

The story should always carry a tagline: “To be continued.”

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‘Birthday, Bro

Let’s see. There’s some news about brothers. One hundred and one years ago today — today being December 17, 2004 — Wilbur and Orville Wright made their first halting hops into the air at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. If you have a chance to go down there sometime, the approximate start and end points for the four flights they did that day are marked. Judging by the distance alone, the accomplishment seems so modest. Eventually, they flew again; eventually the skeptics accepted they could actually do it. And the next thing you know, we have people prancing on the moon and stealth bombers flying over Baghdad. But that’s another story.

There’s more December 17th news in my life. Forty-eight years ago today — not that I remember it, but the event was documented by senior family members, doctors, nurses, and Cook County — my brother Chris was born, the third Brekke baby to appear in two years, eight months, and 15 days. Back then, it was just a family; nowadays, it would be a reality show. The Amazing Baby Race or something.

Anyway: Happy birthday, Chris!

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Abe Lincoln, Gay Republican

Gaylincoln Giving “Lincoln bedroom” a whole new meaning: The New York Times has a story this morning on a new book that says  Abraham Lincoln, our gloomiest president, was “gay.” The work, “The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln” by the now-deceased psychologist and sex researcher C.A. Tripp, focuses on two men with whom Lincoln shared a bed: a four-year bunkmate in Illinois and a bodyguard who hunkered down with the chief executive for a time during the Civil War.

The Times quotes Larry Kramer, the AIDS activist, as saying, “… the most important president in the history of the United States was gay. Now maybe they’ll leave us alone, all those people in the party he founded.” (He’s got to be kidding: This is going to send the anti-gay conservatives into paroxysms of rage about the “home-a-sekshool conspiracy to turn America home-a-sekshool.”) One historian, Jean H. Baker, speculates in the article that Lincoln’s gayness could explain his willingness to break with popular opinion on slavery and issue the Emancipation Proclamation.

It turns out the stories about Lincoln bedding down with dudes are both true and well-worn (examples of past online posts here and here, and the discussion is said to go back to Lincoln’s lifetime; in my own sheltered experience I hadn’t encountered this idea before). But here’s the thing: Even if it’s true that, apart from sleeping under the same covers, he was sexually involved with these guys, isn’t there something false or forced in mapping the modern idea of gayness onto him, as the people reacting to this book are doing? As the Times notes, the word homosexual was coined only in the 1890s; ideas like gay consciousness and queer liberation have emerged much more recently. Just consider the world Lincoln emerged from: Homosexual sex was a criminal offense, and had been for centuries in Britain and America (the Wikipedia notes in its review of the history of sodomy law that the first such statute on the books was Henry VIII’s Buggery Act).

Not that we can’t interpret the past with our own knowledge and understanding of the world today: We really don’t have a choice. So in the case of Thomas Jefferson, we see something odious in the fact he couldn’t bring himself to free his slaves and had a prolonged conjugal relationship with one of them. But that doesn’t make him a member of the Jim Crow movement or the Klan. Likewise with Lincoln: If he did have a thing for guys, it’s a much more complicated matter than simply labeling him the Gay Emancipator to figure out what his homosexuality meant both to him and to history.

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1941

Because the “Spigot is the ‘Spigot, let’s note before the calendar changes that today is December 7, the anniversary (on this side of the International Date Line) of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, the event that finally dragged the United States into the global conflict that had already cost millions of lives in Europe and Asia. The same week of the attack on the U.S. fleet in Hawaii, the Soviets stopped the German advance on Moscow — German units made it into outlying areas of the capital –and threw the invaders into a retreat that nearly became a rout.

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Bush, Then and Now

So now that the election is over and our country is healed of its silly divisions, it’s interesting to compare Bush’s acceptance speech today with the one he gave after he finally got his way in 2000. Not that they’re identical, but there are a few familiar phrases. I’d say the 2000 speech had a couple moments of real grace — for instance, when mentioning Jefferson’s 1800 election. It’s odd to read his calls for courtesy and civility and bipartisanship now (especially when they were delivered from the Texas state house, the scene of his allies’ more recent attempt to cripple the Democrats by gerrymandering them to death). Today’s talk was brief and pragmatic, except for the sort of odd reference to Texas at the end. It’s a little early for him to be talking retirement.

In any case, if you’re looking for signs of reconciliation (yeah, he got a record number of votes, as Cheney said; he also had a record number votes against him) his words are less than convincing, ’cause we’ve heard this spiel before and we’ve seen where that led.

Today:

Earlier today, Senator Kerry called with his congratulations. We had a really good phone call. He was very gracious. Senator Kerry waged a spirited campaign, and he and his supporters can be proud of their efforts. Laura and I wish Senator Kerry and Teresa and their whole family all our best wishes.

2000:

This evening I received a gracious call from … Vice President [Gore]. We agreed to meet early next week in Washington and we agreed to do our best to heal our country after this hard-fought contest. Tonight I want to thank all the thousands of volunteers and campaign workers who worked so hard on my behalf. I also salute the vice president and his supports for waging a spirited campaign. And I thank him for a call that I know was difficult to make. Laura and I wish the vice president and Senator Lieberman and their families the very best. “

***

Today:

Today I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent. To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust. A new term is a new opportunity to reach out to the whole nation. We have one country, one Constitution, and one future that binds us.

2000:

I was not elected to serve one party, but to serve one nation. The president of the United States is the president of every single American, of every race and every background. Whether you voted for me or not, I will do my best to serve your interests and I will work to earn your respect.

***

Today:

We will continue our economic progress. We’ll reform our outdated tax code. We’ll strengthen the Social Security for the next generation. We’ll make public schools all they can be. And we will uphold our deepest values of family and faith.

2000:

Together, we will work to make all our public schools excellent, teaching every student of every background and every accent, so that no child is left behind. Together we will save Social Security and renew its promise of a secure retirement for generations to come. Together we will strengthen Medicare and offer prescription drug coverage to all of our seniors. Together we will give Americans the broad, fair and fiscally responsible tax relief they deserve. Together we’ll have a bipartisan foreign policy true to our values and true to our friends, and we will have a military equal to every challenge and superior to every adversary. Together we will address some of society’s deepest problems one person at a time, by encouraging and empowering the good hearts and good works of the American people.

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An Old Impulse

I’ve mentioned Minnesota Public Radio’s “The Writer’s Almanac” before. Kate started getting it a while ago and started reading me some of the poetry and literary notes that are part of the daily email. Then she signed me up, and then I signed my dad up. It’s the best day-to-day email “newsletter” I’ve ever gotten and usually superbly written and edited.

A recent example: While I was back in Chicago, I missed the almanac for Sept. 11 (the archiving isn’t ideal; you’ll have to scroll down to find the day’s entry). The poem offered that day was “To a Terrorist,” by Stephen Dunn (from his book “Between Angels“):

“For the historical ache, the ache passed down

which finds its circumstance and becomes

the present ache, I offer this poem

without hope, knowing there’s nothing,

not even revenge, which alleviates

a life like yours. I offer it as one

might offer his father’s ashes

to the wind, a gesture

when there’s nothing else to do.

Still, I must say to you:

I hate your good reasons.

I hate the hatefulness that makes you fall

in love with death, your own included.

Perhaps you’re hating me now,

I who own my own house

and live in a country so muscular,

so smug, it thinks its terror is meant

only to mean well, and to protect.

Christ turned his singular cheek,

one man’s holiness another’s absurdity.

Like you, the rest of us obey the sting,

the surge. I’m just speaking out loud

to cancel my silence. Consider it an old impulse,

doomed to become mere words.

The first poet probably spoke to thunder

and, for a while, believed

thunder had an ear and a choice.”

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Ambushed by History

Philip Roth had a long essay in the Sunday New York Times book review section. The subject was his new novel, a sort of reimagining of American history if the isolationist, anti-semitic Hitler apologist Charles Lindbergh had been elected president in 1940 instead of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Most of the piece is an explanation of the book’s origins and an exploration of method. But he takes a detour near the end to puncture our most comforting national myth: That the purity of our devotion to freedom has made us somehow indestructible, immune from history:

“History claims everybody, whether they know it or not and whether they like it or not. In recent books, including this new one, I take that simple fact of life and magnify it through the lens of critical moments I’ve lived through as a 20th-century American. I was born in 1933, the year Hitler came to power and F.D.R. was first inaugurated as president and Fiorello La Guardia was elected mayor of New York and Meyer Ellenstein became the mayor of Newark, my city’s first and only Jewish mayor. As a small child I heard on our living room radio the voices of Nazi Germany’s Fuhrer and America’s Father Coughlin delivering their anti-Semitic rants. Fighting and winning the Second World War was the great national preoccupation from December 1941 to August 1945, the heart of my grade school years. The cold war and the anti-Communist crusade overshadowed my high school and college years as did the uncovering of the monstrous truth of the Holocaust and the beginning of the terror of the atomic era. The Korean War ended shortly before I was drafted into the Army, and the Vietnam War and the domestic upheaval it fomented — along with the assassinations of American political leaders — clamored for my attention every day throughout my 30’s.

“And now Aristophanes, who surely must be God, has given us George W. Bush, a man unfit to run a hardware store let alone a nation like this one, and who has merely reaffirmed for me the maxim that informed the writing of all these books and that makes our lives as Americans as precarious as anyone else’s: all the assurances are provisional, even here in a 200-year-old democracy. We are ambushed, even as free Americans in a powerful republic armed to the teeth, by the unpredictability that is history. May I conclude with a quotation from my book? ”Turned wrong way round, the relentless unforeseen was what we schoolchildren studied as “History,” harmless history, where everything unexpected in its own time is chronicled on the page as inevitable. The terror of the unforeseen is what the science of history hides, turning a disaster into an epic.’

“In writing these books I’ve tried to turn the epic back into the disaster as it was suffered without foreknowledge, without preparation, by people whose American expectations, though neither innocent nor delusional, were for something very different from what they got.”