The Heroic History of Harrington

This week's readings were really interesting to read for the most part until it came to the Harrington 100 Years. I think the information the writers used was valuable but way it was displayed was not helpful at all. The authors kept going back and forth between the past tense and the present tense, making it hard to keep up. I kept thinking, was the author alive back in the 1880's or what? I also laughed when I saw who compiled the information, the Harrington High School Cheerleaders. Why would cheerleaders be compiling information, was it for a class or for fun or what? I also laughed when I got to page 19 and the author stated "...the keeping of pigs within the city limits is prohibited," because as we were driving up to the the Hotel Harrington on Saturday, there they were about 8 pigs in an enclosure right outside the school district building. Oh how times change I guess.

I do think a lot of the information presented in this book was not important like slowing of gas sales in the 1920's. The history of where things were and who owned them was really interesting but I do think there should have been some diagrams to give frame of reference of where those buildings were to outsides who don't know the family names and don't know the street layout of the town. The pictures that were used were good for the most part but needed better descriptions (page 18 and the telegraph operators, who is who, there are 3 women in the center of the picture.)

or they were really hard to see what was happening (page 31 , building destroyed by fire.)

However, I did catch myself spending extra time looking for the Hotel Harrington/ Lincoln Hotel/ Electric Hotel just to see what it looked like 'back in the day.' I've fairly certain I spend more time looking for the Hotel than absorbing the facts the author was telling me. This book also needs to be updated, the information is over 30 years old and many things have changed and it would be interesting to see what has happened since then.

I really like reading The Story of Lincoln County Washington: 1909 because of the way the author wrote. He has a very eliquent way of writing that makes the book more enjoyable. For example, he writes or all the glories of California, "..tumbling torrents teeming with sock-eyed salmon.." This book is just interesting to read and gives information that is helpful understanding formation of the town. The book is signed to the Governor and it is apparent that the book is written mainly for him but it also gives good insight for us now. I love his use of pros as well as facts.

Where did Slavery go?

Sorry this is a little late, I'm working and I got really caught up in the readings for this week. It was so nice to actually read a book that told the history but also connected it to modern day life. The book Confederates in the Attic written Tony Horwitz gives a great account how modern day people of the South deal with remembering the past, specifically the Civil War. He starts out by discussing his introduction to the Civil War, by his grandfather and his father, and then seg-ways into how he starts his journey of enlightenment on how the South continues to celebrate their confederate past. Horowitz starts by spending a night with a group of civil war re-enactors (or hardcores as they call themselves). His interest is peeked and he continues on his journey to Salisbury, NC. He meets a lot of interesting people, including the leaders of the local United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) and the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV). Horowitz gets into the issue of prejudice with a young black hair dresser and gets a great quote from a local saying that she was glad they had the freedom to commemorate the war but they also need to remember that they lost.

Horowitz continues his journey to Charleston, NC, the birthplace of the Civil War and it's Fort Sumter. I think this part of the book really gives the reader perspective on what life is like in the South. For the most part, Charlestonians commemorate the Civil War in the own way but it isn't at the forefront of everything but still has a major stake in a lot of people's lives.

Here is a little blurb on the 152nd commemoration of the Star of the West event. 

Painting of the Star of the West attack on January 9, 1861
Photo courtesy of the Charleston City Paper 

The thing I find most interesting, is that for the most part, the confederates of this day and age don't want to admit that the one of the main causes was Slavery. They say it has to do with states rights vs. federal rights, or Northern aggression but at the most basic of levels, the cause was slavery. Horowitz brushes over the viewpoints of African-Americans in the South but there isn't really any mention of slavery. I also couldn't help but think about my possible move to Florida if I would see confederate flags stuff like that. I know that not a whole lot happened in Florida during the Civil War but Pensacola is close to the boarder of Alabama so I'm not sure. I looked up some history of the state in the war which showed Florida's limited contributions.  

I also couldn't believe the article we read about the lack of slavery discussions in plantations and museums in the South but as I continued to read the author makes a good point that most historic places "whitewashed" history. I know that so many places want to focus on the things that were good during history, not things that were bad because who would want to visit a historic place if they knew their families had been slaves or worse. 

I think the best part of this weeks readings wasn't a reading at all, it was the satirical video about the Confederate soldiers getting a pep-talk from a Lieutenant. It makes fun of the Confederates and their "irrational" ways of thinking. I think my favorite quote from this video is: "'The South never won no war getting caught up in no logistics.' ' The South never won no war..' 'Exactly!'" This just cracks me up and then reading the comments people posted is just a funny. 

The Power of Place in Our Everyday Lives.

This week’s readers were gave us an interest look at how place effects different aspects of history. The book we read is titled The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History by Dolores Hayden and gives a new perspective on how to deal with history and preservation from not only a historian’s point of view but from the point of view of an architect as well as a sociologist. As history majors,  we get so caught up in the idea that we know how the world should interpret history but we do not really take into consideration what other fields have to say about the history. According to the story in the beginning of the book about an architect and a sociologist going head to head about why certain buildings should or shouldn't be saved, historians aren’t the only ones who only understand their point of view. Another interesting thing that the author talks about is the complete disregard of ethnic groups and women when it comes to the discussion of place. Hayden states that it is only in the last 10-20 years that places have started trying to preserve places that hold significance to the civil rights movement and women’s rights. (Here is a website created by the Park Service to document and display significant women's rights monuments and places.) 

I also thought it was interesting the idea of place memory. I guess I never really thought about it but places do evoke memory even if they were seemingly insignificant memories. Hayden says “Because the urban landscape stimulates visual memory, it is an important but underutilized resource for public history”. (pg. 47) she continues on to give an example: a curator in Baltimore complained that the every oral history interview she did, the person only talked about place. If we stop and actually think about what emotions and memories our childhood home, or school or some physical place evoke within us, it should make sense that places are all people ever talk about. Places like the Statue of Liberty have place memory for the whole nation but on a more personal level, what holds place memory for you? For me, it's my house, the places I have worked over the years; any place that holds any kind of memory for me. 

Picture from the World Historical Places Blog

The author then goes into a detailed kind of case-study about Los Angeles, CA and how they are having a difficult time understand and documenting their social history. She describes the diversity that characterizes LA and how that shapes the history that is told about Los Angeles. It is interesting to read about the troubles that surround documenting the history of LA and I wasn’t really sure why it was relevant, and then I read the back cover of the book. Hayden does a lot of her work on Los Angeles so I guess it kind of makes sense to add. 

Digitizing Our Lives

For this week’s readings we read about the September 11 archive website that was set up after the attacks to collect and make public personal interpretations of the events. The author, James T. Sparrow goes into great detail about how and why they started this on-line archive. He states that there was a need for a place where people could go and contribute their own little part of history. He states “the website they visited- and built in the process, in many cases- was the September 11 Digital Archives, an online archive built by ordinary people who chose to document their small parts of this globe-shaking event…”  (pg. 398). The idea of creating digital archives so close to the event was probably very therapeutic for some people because it gave them a place to share their stories while also making a significant contribution to history. Sparrow continues on to talk about the trials and triumphs of the digital archives and a lot of it was unnecessary (the parts about how they came up with the domain name and such) but the whole project was a really interesting idea.  I did a little poking around the internet and I found that other digital archive sites that do the same thing that Sparrow and his team did. There is one forHurricane Katrina for example.

This is what came up when I Googled myself.
The top on is the only one that is really me. 

I also enjoyed the video about preserving your reputationon-line. I think that is very important these days because it is super easy to just Google someone and basically find out whatever you need to know about them. I Googled myself and it was creepy the amount of information that was out there on my. I have all my social media sites blocked that I use and I limit my posting on the sites I can’t limit. I think a lot of people especially students need to take the time to Google/ Bing themselves and see what comes up and really take this video’s advice. “Would I want my Grandfather to see this? Would I want my employer to see this?” Those are important questions to ask yourself when you post something on the internet.

The video entitled Big Date: Drowning in Numbers is on a website with cookies by the way so be careful. Also the video was very interesting to think about. I was actually talking to someone yesterday (during the Super Bowl and their endless GoDaddy.com commercials (beware, very awkward) about the vastness of the internet and she was so confused how a company like GoDaddy.com can sell space on the internet when, according to this video, it is almost completely limitless. I guess that would be an interesting question to think about but it probably comes down to if you want to figure out how to write the code to get your page up, as well as many other things. The video does make me wonder, are computers going to take over the world, I mean think about how many millions of servers we’re going to need to hold all of that data, soon there won’t be any room for us on this planet… just servers and computers.. dun dun dun!!!!