History Sightings

History Sightings

The Art of Obit Writing: Bette Davis suspects, the Times of London, NYT Portraits in Grief, and Capturing life - not death

Not long ago, The New Yorker carried an account of the Great Obituary Writers' Conference. What other section of the newspaper is as well read on a daily basis or at least quickly perused as the obit section ?

We found a site that might fill the occasional void when the obits are thin in your local newspaper: Obitpage.com. (The host and editor for the site is Carolyn Gilbert, founder of the International Association of Obituarists and chair of the Great Obituary Writers' National Conferences in the US.) The site also contains the article, It Was a Dark and Stormy Night, outlining the difficulties gathering background in advance for an obit slated for actress Bette Davis. The astute Ms. Davis guessed his real mission:

" 'By any chance, are you interviewing me for my obituary?" he remembers her asking.

Cornered, he confessed. "Yes, as a matter of fact."

Whereupon she disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a shaker of martinis. He remembers her saying, "In that case, why don't we get rid of this silly tea and have a drink?" '

And who of us haven't loved the English approach to obituaries: The Times of London carries off informative obits so well that, again, you wish you could have met these characters. Obitpage has a listing of 'out-of-town' newspapers' obituary departments.

The most heralded collection of obits have been those that made up the section of the New York Times called Portraits in Grief offering short, well-researched profiles of those who died in the events of September 11.

Nigel Starck, an Australian journalist and university professor, delivered the 'keynote' speech at the conference of obit writers. A previous essay of his focusses on the trend to frank obits:

"But this determination to write only well of the dead is, to an increasing degree, in conflict with practice elsewhere. My study has found growing evidence of a departure from the posthumous parallax, notably in obituaries published in the US and the UK."

Stark, in his essay, Capturing life - not death: A case for burying the posthumous parallax, and pumps for candor in writing obits. In this cause, he cites the following obits by Hugh Massingberd, former editor of the Daily Telegraph's obit page as examples of the realistic and candid approach to the subjects lives:

"Ian Board…was the proprietor of the Colony Room, a Soho drinking club favoured by Bohemians, artists, homosexuals and assorted loafers. Perched on a stool by the door, clad in tasteless leisure-wear…[he] would trade coarse badinage with his regulars.

Denisa, Lady Newborough, who has died aged 79, was many things: wire-walker, nightclub girl, nude dancer, air pilot. Her admirers included the Kings of Spain and Bulgaria, Adolf Hitler…Benito Mussolini…and Sheikh ben Ghana, who gave her 500 sheep."

 

Black History/Susie King Taylor, Progress of a People, Samella Lewis and Sharon Patton

I've known rivers, my soul has grown deep like the rivers —Langston Hughes

February is Black History Month and we found some sites that might not be on the Internet's more familiar paths.

The DuSable Museum has on its site a section dealing with the members of the 9th and 10th Calvary and the 24th and 25th Infantry Regiments, who were the first African Americans in US history to serve in the regular peacetime army. Also called the Buffalo Soldiers, a stamp commissioned by the United States Postal Service to honor these soldiers. Secretary of State Colin Powell was the force behind The Buffalo Soldier Monument in Leavenworth, Kansas, a recent addition to the Fort Leavenworth's historic landmarks.

"Justice we ask — to be citizens of these United States, where so many of our people have shed their blood with their white comrades, that the stars and stripes should never be polluted." — Susie King Taylor - 1902

Reminiscences of my Life in Camp with the 33d United States Colored Troops Late 1st S. C. Volunteer is the book written by Susie King Taylor:

"I was born under the slave law in Georgia, in 1848, and was brought up by my grandmother in Savannah. There were three of us with her, my younger sister and brother. My brother and I being the two eldest, we were sent to a friend of my grandmother, Mrs. Woodhouse, a widow, to learn to read and write. She was a free woman and lived on Bay Lane, between Habersham and Price streets, about half a mile from my house. We went every day about nine o'clock, with our books wrapped in paper to prevent the police or white persons from seeing them."

The Library of Congress endeavored to add documents and other items from the Library's African American collections to the National Digital Library, including The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship.

"In 1899, Librarian of Congress Herbert Putnam asked Library of Congress staff member Daniel A. P. Murray "to secure a copy of every book and pamphlet in existence, by a Negro Author, to be used in connection with the Exhibit of Negro Authorship at the Paris Exposition of 1900, and later placed in the Library of Congress." In consultation with African-American scholars across the country, Murray developed a list of 1,100 works. Five hundred of these were displayed in Paris." Authors represented are Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Benjamin W. Arnett, Alexander Crummel, and Emanuel Love. A number of the pamphlets are included on the Progress of a People site.

Samella Lewis is Emerita Professor of Art History, Scripps College and author of The Art of Elizabeth Catlett and African American Art and Artists. She has been making her own art since the 1940s and is being exhibited at the FDG Zimart Galleria in LA

Read Senior Women Web's Interview with Sharon Patton, Director of the Allen Memorial Art Museum of Oberlin College and the author of African-American Art.

 

History/Plagiarism: Recognition, Examples, Doris Kearns &Stephen Ambrose

The subject of plagiarism has gained some notice of late and surprisingly, some of the best known writers of history have raised their hands to admit guilt.

The Weekly Standard carried an article about Lynne McTaggart who found that Doris Kearns Goodwin had "used a number of phrases and sentences without quotation marks that had been drawn from three earlier works: Rose Kennedy's Time to Remember, Hank Searls's The Lost Prince, and Lynne McTaggart's Kathleen Kennedy: Her Life and Times.

"Goodwin told the Boston Globe, 'Obviously I didn't take any of her ideas.' Wrong, says McTaggart: 'The issue is not ideas, it is the words. We have copyright laws for this. . . . [The issue] was not whether one had lifted ideas but whether one had lifted words. . . . My lawyers felt there was a substantial infringement of copyright.' "

"McTaggart has no regrets over her pursuit of a private settlement of the issue. 'I respected the fact that [Goodwin] had a reputation to protect,' she says. 'I don't want to destroy her reputation or have her book considered worthless. She's made an important contribution, and it,s a shame that she allowed this to happen, because she had something so special with her access to the Kennedy material. . . . It's mystifying to me' why she did it."

Indeed. Has it been a while since you read a definition of the word or concept plagiarism? It's a bit like the quandary faced by Justice Potter when he said, "I can't define pornography, but I know it when I see it!" The University of Indiana has supplied an instructive section on the phenomenon with a section, How to Recognize Unacceptable and Acceptable Paraphrases.

There are computer assisted instructions and software on what constitutes plagiarism and how to avoid it. Hamilton College is offering examples of offending writings and methods to use when searching for possible infringements are available from a Rutgers faculty member. Guidelines for 'Proper Attribution from Northwestern' have developed from the university's 'Principles Regarding Academic Integrity.'

The thorough discussion and debate on PBS' Lehrer NewsHour regarding Ms. Kearns Goodwin and Stephen Ambrose is worth the read.

 

History/Smithsonian Magazine

There are some sites that are little troves of information which provide visuals to tempt your interest. We went, initially, to the Smithsonian Magazine site to look at a few articles, including "Mongrel Nation: Time and again, America has demonstrated a resilience that is rooted in the remarkable diversity of her people."

Next, we had to chuckle over a letter and a bit of White House and Smithsonian memorabilia:

Robert L. Hermanos New York, New York

We moved onto a profile of Sam Maloof, a favorite furniture maker of ours in the American Craft movement and finally came to rest in the Legacies section which offered this rationale about the section of the site:

These objects reflect (over 3.2 million of them) not just the lives of the people who made and used them but also the values of the people who chose to preserve them. They represent different answers to the question: What is worth saving?

The Virtual Gallery allows the viewer to choose by gallery, keyword or category. There's the cup that held President McKinley's last drink (1901), State china from the Lyndon B. Johnson administration (1968), the ever-popular Fiestaware from the '40s, a dress dubbed 'Eleanor Blue', after the gown Mrs. Roosevelt wore to FDR's inauguration in 1933, a friend to all children (and adults), Kermit, the Frog (circa 1970) and a very attractive pair of wedding shoes worn by the bride of Tom Thumb in 1863.

There's a section titled, Most Intriguing Objects, including the "Acid Test" signboard (about 1964), colorful plywood panel, which Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters used to advertise concerts and poetry readings. Fittingly, the late Ken Kesey signed the deed of this gift with a Day-Glo marker.

 

History and Travel

It is vacation time and one way to explore the country and absorb history along the way would be to visit presidential libraries. They dot the country, from presidents Franklin Roosevelt to Jimmy Carter, from Dwight Eisenhower to Ronald Reagan.

The Roosevelt Library, during a display called Oddities, etc A Display of Affection, includes the following letter that accompanied the gift of a handkerchief to the chief executive:

"I am sending you a handkerchief with your initial on it. I put the initial on it myself. It is not very big but it will be all right unless you have a bad cold."

The Jimmy Carter Library, located in Atlanta, has a kid's page that features pictures and a biography of one of his most trusted advisors, Rosalynn as well as children's literature about the former president.

Although a visit to the Dwight Eisenhower Library is a self-guided tour, the site has a virtual tour online. The memorable U-2 spy incident is thoroughly examined at the site for those who can remember where they were when news of the shooting down of the reconnaissance plane occurred.

Selected photographs from the career and life of the former president, first family and first lady, Betty Ford (including one of Mrs. Ford dancing on the Cabinet table), are available at the library site. A rather unique trio is that of Andy Warhol, Bianca Jagger and Ford son, Jack, is pictured on the balcony outside the residence.

Picturing the Century: 100 Years of Photography is the Library of Congress' traveling exhibition. Topics include: The New Century, The Great War and The New Era, The Great Depression and the New Deal, A World in Flames, Postwar America and Century's End.

 

History/ The Great Dams

The construction age of the great US dams was a hallmark of the twentieth century. Their story and place in that last century as well as a controversy in this century is on the Web:

The Grand Coulee Dam is perhaps the most famous of these structures. There is enough concrete in the Grand Coulee Dam to build a 60 foot wide highway four inches thick, from Los Angeles to New York City which can be compared to a four lane highway 3,000 miles long.

The St. Francis dam was the site of a collapse in 1928. The dam gave way on March 12, 1928. At its peak the wall of water was said to be 78 feet high; by the time it hit Santa Paula, 42 miles south of the dam, the water was estimated to be 25 feet deep. Almost everything in its path was destroyed: livestock, structures, railways, bridges, livestock, and orchards. By the time it was over, parts of Ventura County lay under 70 feet of mud and debris. Over 500 people were killed and damage estimates topped $20 million.

Glen Canyon Dam was authorized by Congress in 1956 to provide water storage in the Upper Colorado River Basin. The result was Lake Powell, the second largest man-made reservoir in the United States. (Lake Mead is the largest.) Apparently, there is still controversy about this dam and the debate continues. A study of the remains of an industrial mining site and a historic wooden vessel located in the river corridor of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area is on the site.

Dams are now part of the ongoing California energy shortage crisis. Friends of the River is a group that relates a long list of extinct and endangered fish, degraded river habitat, and lost recreational opportunities associated with existing hydroelectric development on California rivers.

History/Internment

The works of artist Henry Sugimoto are on view at the Japanese American Museum. Interned with other Japanese-Americans in California during World War II and sent to an assembly center in Fresno, his career as a painter never quite recovered from the internment. "Initially in secret and then openly, Sugimoto created an extensive series of paintings that powerfully capture that painful time" and "he conveys the struggles, suffering and complexity of life in a detention camp."

There are other exhibits of life in the camps: The University of Washington displays photos from Camp Harmony, the Seattle settlement while the University of Utah has an exhibit from Lake Tule in Northern California including a Topaz High School reunion photo and the extensive relocation collection.

 

Preserving the old and the fragile takes education and caring, hallmarks that seem apt for Senior Women. The art of conservation can be seen at sites offering information and education, such as Conservation Online, a broad Stanford University project. The Winterthur Conservation Labs employ M.S.-level students who treat a wide range of textiles ranging from archaeological fragments to painted banners from local fire stations. The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation is concerned with such issues as longwall mining under the Thomas Kent, Jr farm at Green County, PA.

The Conservation Center at the University of Denver's site displays Susanna and the Elders (a lascivious group if there ever were one) before and after conservation. And the Association for Gravestone Studies in Greenfield, MA helps to determine carver attribution, symbol, ornamental carving and epitaphs, a final conservation project if there ever was one.

Culture and Arts/Black History

February is Black History month and there are sites to be explored: The Black History Museum has a varied menu with exhibits such as Black Resistance during slavery, the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II, the difficult struggle of a pioneering sports figure, Jackie Robinson and the young revolutionary Black Panther movement. The 351 titles in the Daniel A. P. Murray Pamphlet collection housed at the Library of Congress include sermons reports of charitable, educational, and political organizations; and college catalogs and graduation orations from Hampton Institute, Morgan College, and Wilberforce University. The early history of African Americans in California is a more provincial site but the Encyclopedia Britannica section has more depth. 'Writing Black' is a literary site and the Internet African American History Challenge provides an interactive quiz after you've absorbed all these facts.

Sightings

History and Holidays, Part 2 - Kwaanza, founded in 1966, began the day after Christmas, and the web provides many more sites now to choose from for this festival. There are arts and crafts pages for kids and a image feature at a e-zine, The Journey Magazine (Chicago Alliance of African American Photographers). Finally, one could forge a new alliance through Kwaanza at Dating 911.

History & Holidays - A part of our population can still remember Christmas 1908 spent at Ellis Island, but there are photos for others to recall the event, as well as the interviews with immigrants. There is even an Ellis Island Cookbook to jog the memory of those who have passed through its portals. Through the web, it's possible to compare traditions for celebrating this holiday as well as a Christmas wallpaper for your computer. Visit online the Lower East Side Tenement Museum and look back a museum-inspired calendar.

Holidays/Hanukkah - For a selection of presents, there are ceramic, crystal, silver filigree and aluminum Hanukiyahs available at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. The National Museum of American Jewish history displays selections from their Judaica Shop. Connecticut artist Karen Rossi crafts a Romance menorah available at the Project Judaica Foundation.

Holidays/Popourri - Christmas seems to inspire some interesting sightings. For instance, the Church of England was victorious in a campaign against a chocolate manufacturer who put a Scrooge-like slogan on a concoction: "Stuff Xmas! Treat yourself." The American Atheists offer Winter Solstice greeting cards and gifts but to test your knowledge of writers from Christmas past, try the Bloomsbury Magazine quiz. Consult the religious calendar for December and you realize that Christmas is just another holiday in a crowded month of many religious celebrations.

World War II/Wallenberg - After decades of differing stories, Aleksandr Yakovlev announced that Raoul Wallenberg was executed in 1947 by the KGB. The Raoul Wallenberg Institute is named for the Swedish diplomat in order to pay homage to his well known work in Hungary towards the end of WWII. Through the site you can read interviews with those he rescued. Less well known is that Wallenberg was a graduate of the U of Michigan architecture school. We make note of one group who confronts extremism today, Task Force Against Hate.

History/Tudor England - A fire blazes in the Great Hall's central hearth, but still the winter wind sneaks somehow in, a strong draught playing tug and war with a nearby ajar door...the invitation to a Tudor Ghost story contest. If you are a fan of the period, there are paintings, movies and an online course for dress in 16th c. Europe to view. There's an article on how to make men's Elizabethan outfits. There were also laws about what men and women could and could not wear.

Holy Days/All Hallow's Eve - Regardless of what you've heard, Halloween is not just for the young. Cornish and North Carolinian ghost stories are eerily entertaining while National Geo has created some ghoulish greetings. For a parody most strange and delightful, try Horton Hears a Heart and, finally, pair up with an available child for a viewing of the deliciously creepy Hayter House.

World War II/Enigma - The German coding machine captured by the British had gone missing. Enigma was kidnapped in April 2000 and ransom negotiations undertaken. Take a tour of Bletchley Park, the headquarters site of of the Government Code & Cypher School in 1938. How about trying your hand at solving the puzzles that the Australian Defense Signals pose. Finally, consider a new career in cryptanalysis at the NSA.

Ancient Worlds/Sites - With the press of political and international events, this is the time to look back at ancient worlds. The Worcester, Mass. museum is highlighting the ancient city of Antioch and a spa town named Daphne. The art of the mosaic included in the exhibit is flourishing today, as links to current artists will attest. The Met is hosting an exhibit of Egyptian Art from Eton College, bequeathed to the school by a Major William Joseph Myers. If you'd like one of those beautiful and ancient faience pieces yourself, you might have to fork out as much as $95,000 for one of those cute little hippos.

Exhibits/Brewing A balky 6th c. camel who, with his master, appears to display a very contemporary attitude is part of the Jewish Museum's Drink and Be Merry exhibit. One of the oldest recipes found for brewing beer might be from the hymn to Nikasi and there are many names for the drink that we call beer... as many as there are cultures: soma, haq, zythos, kurmi, kvas, tsampa..... But now that you're ready to raise a glass, don't you need an international toast?

Smithsonian/Refurbishment - A donation of $80 million for refurbishing the Smithsonian's American History Museum will spruce up that institution. Until it occurs, view virtual exhibits at their site, including Fred Maroon's photos of the Nixon's 1970-74 years and those familiar characters: Jeb Magruder and John Dean. There's a claustrophic view of submarine life during the Cold War years, but now that feather boas are fashionable again, even on lampshades, take a look at The Feather Trade.

Holidays/Labor Day - A holiday noted more for its signal of summer's end, Labor Day has great meaning, nonetheless. There is considerable literature about the 1919 Seattle strike, considered the first 'general strike' in the U.S., but a little noted part of that era is the Women’s Participation in the Pacific Northwest’s Labor Movement during WWI. Better known is the experience and tragedy of women in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911. On the lighter side are movies with labor themes and the music of the labor movement, including:

I am a union woman,
Just as brave as I can be,
I do not like the bosses,
And the bosses don’t like me.

Archeology/Aphrodisias - A Senior Woman indeed: New York University has a current dig at Aphrodisias in Turkey, a city which once served as a sanctuary for the worship of the goddess Aphrodite. The project itself is ambitious and impressive: a stadium from the 1st Century A.D. which was first designed for athletic contests could hold 30,000spectators. No domes for them.

History/Canada - Most are familiar with Ellis Island and it's history-- how about Pier 21? The Halifax, Canada portal opened in 1928 and closed in 1971 welcoming over one million immigrants, displaced persons and refugees. They were war brides and their children; 3,000 British evacuee children escaping war in their native lands and 494,000 WW II Canadian troops bound for Europe. There's a Wall of Honor with names of those who passed that way and a drama series about Pier 21 that has debuted. Of course, the next natural step is the National Archives for genealogy links.

Naval History/Submarines - The plight of the Russian submarine, Kursk, recalled the rescue of the USS Squalus in 1939 using the McCann rescue chamber. Reportedly, the chamber was never used again in an emergency situation. The Navy commissioned an artist's conception of the event but photos do exist. Twenty-six men were lost from the sub, originally built at the Portsmouth, N.H. shipyards.

Tourism and History - The Bikini Atoll, scene of a number of atomic tests in the 1940s and 50s, could be permanently re-inhabited if certain remedial measures are taken. Meantime, the Bureau of Atomic Tourism provides a virtual trip to atomic history locations while Salt Water Fisherman extolls the spectacular reef fishing. Scuba Divers swim past the USS Saratoga but, more poignantly, the Lonely Planet Series refers to the post-test suffering of the Marshallese Islanders. To lighten the past a bit, the Bikini Atoll site includes a history of the Bikini bathing suit - what a trip!

History/H.L.Hunley - As older women, we can appreciate the well-preserved. The wreck of the Civil War submarine, H.L.Hunley, has been raised from its Atlantic Ocean grave off the South Carolina coast. Its 1864 sinking of the USS Housatonic adds to the history of the excavation ands sheds light on little publicized arms of the government; the Submerged Cultural Resources Unit of the National Park Service, a global presence, and the Navy's Underwater Archeology Branch. Another well-preserved site is Charleston itself, that lovely city near the Hunley raising.

Memorials/World War II - The American Battle Monuments Commission won approval of the final architectural design of the World War II Memorial from the Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) 55 years after the end of the war. There had been an ongoing controversy about the proposed location and even Tom Hanks (Saving Private Ryan) had entered the fray.

 

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