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LAND, from the prolific Simon Winchester

June 24, 2021 by Leave a Comment

Simon Winchester has taught me a great deal. Including: in any given used bookshop, there will always be at least one nonfiction book by Simon Winchester that I have not read before. Past encounters, each one a pleasure, include: Outposts: Journeys to the Surviving Relics of the British Empire; Hong Kong: Here Be Dragons; Korea: A Walk Through the Land of Miracles; Pacific Rising; The Map that Changed the World, or was it A Crack at the Edge of the World; Atlantic (or, maybe, Pacific); Oxford; and probably several more. I believe The Map That Changed the World and The Professor and the Madman are patiently waiting for my attention.

So why another? And why this book? Mostly, because he’s interested, and, as a rule, if Simon Winchester is interested, then I am, too. The new book is called LAND: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World. If my count is correct, this is his 33rd book, but even the publisher is reluctant to name a number (“the acclaimed author of many books).

His fascination begins with his own land, formerly owned by “a plumber named Ceasare,” a “second-generation Sicilian-American.” The tract is “123 1/4 acres of forested and rocky mountainside, located in the hamlet of Wassaic, in the village of Amenia, the town of Dover, the County of Duchess, in the state of New York.” That’s quite a lot to unpack, a string of political decisions organized, in part, to claim title to land that once belonged to nobody, but was certainly taken, in a series of shameful acts, from the natives who once relied upon the area for sustenance. Before British royalty determined that their might gave them the right, long before, there was a long history, dating back over hundreds of millions of years–“geological turmoil executed on a titanic scale…a tortured and spectacular history that begins with volcanic land formation, and is given over to eons of sudden fracturing, splitting, compressing, heating, pummeling, twisting, folding, and breaking, followed by millions more years of inundations by tropical seas…” (you get the idea).

The author is British but based in the United States, and so, there is a lengthy discussion about North American natives and how they were stripped of their land. Happily, Winchester’s view is global. And one of the most important questions about global land use is just how much of it exists–and how it might be measured. And mapped. The mapping of the earth is a very complicated project, a crazy idea promoted by glacier expert Professor Albrecht Penck, who nearly succeeded in mapping the entire planet at a scale of one to one million. Penck’s design would have resulted in a scale model about the size of a house. And it would have disallowed the likes of Terra Incognito, or Here Be Dragons. But there were fierce arguments between governments that would need to cooperate–the French, for example, insisted upon the Metric System, and the English refused to go in that direction. Remarkably, the project moved ahead, albeit nearly two decades later than planned. Remnants remain, including the use of Greenwich (Prime) Meridian), and an abundance of really good maps–“France mapped much of francophone Africa. Germany made maps of all German-speaking countries in Europe. The entirety of the Roman Empire was mapped.” There was a fifty-sheet series on Brazil, and 107 sheets on Hispanic America, and more. It took eight years of trekking and wandering to map Mongolia and Chinese Turkestan; it was done by forty scientists from six countries protected by thirty infantrymen and more than three hundred camels, plus a large number of local helpers. Mapping 37 billion acres of land, without much technology, was an amazing accomplishment, but the job was completed. Still, the project remained alive, if on life support, until December, 1986. By that time, airline maps (which were simpler, easier to produce and update) served global needs.

As I learned this morning, there is still quite a bit that I don’t know about the distinction between, say, a republic and a nation, or a nation and a country. All the same thing? Although the author does not address the question directly, he did cause me to look more closely at Apple’s Maps application when I was speaking with a colleague in Armenia. Yes, Armenia is a country, because it is a nation with its own government which occupies a particular territory. The part about a nation is related to people with common interests, and this is certainly true of Armenia. It’s a republic. It’s located west of Azerbaijan, which is also a republic–but part of Azerbaijan is separated by the rest. That is, Armenia is both east and west of Azerbaijan. Armenia also borders Iran, Georgia, and Turkey. But if you look just a bit further north, you’ll find a bunch of republics with unfamiliar names: the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic; the Republic of Karachi-Cherkessia, The Republic, of Adygeya, The Republic of North Osetia-Alania, and the Republic of Dagestan. There’s also the Republic of Chechnya, which is familiar. CIA Factbook to the rescue: “46 provinces (oblasti, singular – oblast), 21 republics (respubliki, singular – respublika), 4 autonomous okrugs (avtonomnyye okrugi, singular – avtonomnyy okrug), 9 krays (kraya, singular – kray), 2 federal cities (goroda, singular – gorod), and 1 autonomous oblast (avtonomnaya oblast’) Ah, but just what is a republic? Wikipedia’s definition: “Kabardino-Balkariya is a ‘Federal subject’ of Russia.” As Winchester points out, there are often stories that explain what happened and how we found ourselves in the present situation, but there are so many conceptions of land, ownership, colonization, nations, and so on, with such a long and twisted history, not much of it is guided by reason or consistent practice. This is unfortunate for social studies teachers who are already overburdened, and fortunate for those of who live in 2021 because there are online resources that can, at least, clarify these stunningly complicated ways to say, “this is my land” or, perhaps as often, “this is not your land.”

If you begin with the assumption that nothing makes sense except power, it’s easier to navigate the strange story of Japanese farmers in California who made unproductive land productive, but were then chased from their land because of World War II paranoia, never to return. Or the complexities associated with Scotland’s potential as a new country, independent from the British Empire after all of these years. Or, perhaps this book provides the framework to comprehend the ways in which colonists redesigned Africa’s borders to form countries whose borders still exist, but rarely make sense. And then, there’s climate change and the potential for natural borders to wash away, for productive land to become useless, for icebound land to become productive.

The book is filled with stories, some familiar, some astonishing, all useful in gaining a contextual understanding of how humans interact with land. The book is, in essence, a really good course in global social studies, written for adults who really ought to know enough about the subject to teach our children. Most of us cannot do that. I know a lot about geography and I cannot do that. Simon Winchester can, did, and I hope he’ll do it again. I want to read Land: The Saga Continues or whatever he decides to call his second book on the subject. If he’s not working on this book just yet, perhaps we can encourage him to do so.

Filed Under: Books & Print, International, Learning, Trends Tagged With: , , , ,

A Surprising Solution to a Deeply Disturbing Problem of Our Own Making

June 14, 2021 by Leave a Comment

Let’s begin with Heather McGhee. She’s the right kind of troublemaker. I heard her interviewed on NPR, got her book, read it carefully, and determined, as she did, that we’ve been wrong-headed about a whole lot of important stuff. She’s the former president of a think tank that focuses on inequality called Demos, and now, she’s both an important spokesperson for clear thinking, and the chair of the world’s largest online racial justice organization, Color of Change.

She’s making trouble because she requires readers to see everyday life from a radically different perspective. Not radical in the political sense, though she does that, too, but radical in the sense of eradication of old perspectives.

On the cover of her new book, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Proper Together, there is an abstract paining of a white boy jumping off a diving board into a swimming pool. Ah, but the swimming pool is a mirage. It was there, at one time, but it’s been filled with cement. Why was it filled with cement? Because, in 1971, Jackson, Mississippi’s city council decided to fill swimming pools with cement so they could not be used by both Black and White swimmers. It was a way to avoid integration. The decision deprived the Black kids from swimming during the ridiculously hot Mississippi summer, but it also deprived the White kids from the doing the same thing. Better that nobody benefit!

If this thinking–roughly, the opposite of public good, so perhaps it’s public bad–was unusual, there would be no book and no reason for Heather McGhee to focus here. Instead, public bad (my term) is the basis for a great deal of public policy in the United States–and not only on hot summer days, not only in Mississippi, and not only in swimming pools. We use this theory of good decision making to work through where people live, how much money they earn, how their kids are educated, how we tax, where we place our roads and highways, and how we make a surprising number of important decisions. Roughly, the theory plays out as follows:

If a policy is a good idea, we should go ahead, but if it benefits Black folks, or equalizes the situation, then we should not go ahead. (Same, roughly, for other minorities.) And if not going ahead harms White folks along the way, that’s just too bad because that’s the decision we’re going to make.

Sounds like something from the 1950s in the American South, or maybe the 1910s. Then, McGhee explains how much of this thinking provides a framework for everyday life for everyone–especially people in lower income areas. The term “shooting yourself in the foot” comes to mind quite often. This is a completely crazy way to govern, to set policy, to run a county or a country. And yet, that’s what we do everyday. And it doesn’t seem to change. That is: the news coverage on George Floyd is extensive, and Black Lives Matter, but the hardcore reality of daily life in the U.S. receives very little coverage. Hence, this book.

She sets the stage with considerable skill. Then, she surprises by telling one story after another, each illustrating the impact of racism in ways that aren’t often considered. For example, “Many of the nation’s biggest and most respected public colleges were tuition free, from the City University of New York to the University of California system. The massive public investment wasn’t considered charity; an individual state saw a return of three to four dollars back for every dollar it invested in public colleges. When the public means ‘white,’ public colleges thrived.”

And then… “That’s no longer the case. Students of color comprised just one in six college students in 1980, but now they make up over four in ten. Over this period of growth among students of color, ensuring college affordability fell out of favor with lawmakers. State legislatures began to dramatically cut what they spent per student on their public colleges, even as the taxable income base in the state grew….By 2017, the majority of state colleges were relying upon student tuition dollars for the majority of their expenses…”

Or, to put this another way, the reason why so many public college students now carry so much college debt is connected to racism. Yes, it’s a bit of a leap, but more examples from other sectors add credibility to this line of thinking. The ripple effect is powerful, and not just on minority populations:” In 2018, the Federal Reserve reported on what most of my generation knows: student debt payments are stopping us from buying our first home, the irreplaceable wealth-building asset.” A rather complicating story of sub-prime mortgages, mostly rooted in racist practices, is the next story she tells, and certainly that has affected, and continues to affect, much of the U.S. population. Weakening of labor unions? Another example of similar practices, similar thinking, similar destruction of the American dream for the majority, not the minorities.

The mythology of democracy is an easy target: from the Founding Fathers through the present, unequal representation, loopholes, workarounds, and other means have been used to elevate a relatively small upscale male white population and to keep everyone else in their place. We’re breaking through, but only a bit, because the status quo is immovable. It’s woven throughout our laws, our political boundaries, our voting districts, our school districts, our tax system, and so much more.

No surprise to find a chapter about redlining–the practice of geographic segregation. No surprise to find the ugly practices of destroying neighborhoods by making decisions about the location of public roads, either. “The economic imperative (of the first half of the 1800s)…set the terms of racial understanding: in the South, Blacks were seen as inferior and servile but needed to be close. In the North, Black people were job competition, therefore seen as dangerous, stricken with a poverty that could be infectious.” Beginning in the later 1880s, and “for the next eight years, segregation dispossessed Native Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and Black Americans of land and often, life. No governments in modern history, save Apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany, have segregated as well as the United States, with precision and under the color of law. These truths are self-evident, but easily overlooked when viewed through the nonsense of “justice for all” and “the land of the free.” Time after time, McGhee hits hard, almost always with evidence and legal history that is difficult to dispute. She is a very convincing advocate of the big picture.

Is K-12 school inequitable. You bet. Here’s a theory on why that’s true, and what might be done about it. “Today, the majority of public school students in the United States are children of color. Why? Because of disproportionate number of white students are enrolled in private schools, comprising 69 percent of K-12 private school enrollment…The pricing up and privatization of public goods has a cost for us all–white families included. A house in a neighborhood unencumbered by systemic racism found in public schools will cost significantly more.” Summarizing a complicated idea, white households pay a 77 percent premium on housing in areas where public schools are “excellent.” (This was written before the housing boom of 2020-2021, so we’re probably looking at 110% today.) On the plus side, when the home is sold, there’s a premium, but there’s also an issue in choosing a home in one of these places. “In order to chase these so-called good schools, white families must be able and willing to stretch their budgets to live in increasingly expensive, and segregated, communities… To be clear, “These white parents are paying for their fear because they’re assuming that white-dominant schools are worth the cost to their white children.” And (yikes!) they are essentially reinforcing the worst possible decisions: that segregated schools are best.

It’s now 2021, so it’s nearly impossible to write a book about any subject without at least one chapter about climate change. And so, we learn about the impact of poor pollution management, how the minority neighborhoods suffer most, and how the pollution spreads to other neighborhoods, too. As with, “The United States is…the biggest carbon polluter in history, but we have one of the strongest and most politically powerful factions opposed to taking action to prevent catastrophic climate change…the key players waging war against environmental protection were reliable white men, from industry executives to the politicians to the media commentators.” She theorizes that our society has taught a lesson: there are winners and losers, and the losers will be the ones who most suffer from climate change. The winners believe they will be fine. Of course, this is faulty thinking, wholly unreasonable and illogical, as evidenced by the frequent droughts that threaten our agribusiness, or the floods that disabled New York City’s subways, or the scary rise on the coastlines that will somebody make beachfront property worthless (regardless of how much wealth is poured into temporary solutions). Basically, the climate change opposition works this way: “we won’t risk the economy for this dubious idea.” And so, we believe, or lead ourselves to believe, that climate change is somebody else’s problem, and that it can be managed in the same ways that we manage school or neighborhood segregation.

Then, McGhee tells the story of Lewiston, Maine. The whole story begins to change. There is hope, and it’s real. Lewiston lots its manufacturing jobs, then its economy, then spiraled into almost no economy at all. There were few jobs, little opportunity, and on Lisbon Street, once Maine’s second largest commercial district, half the stores were vacant. So what happened? Refugees from the Somali Civil War led immigrants first to Atlanta, then to the less expensive Portland, Maine, then to Lewiston where “quiet streets offered more peace and the low rents offered more security. Other African refugees followed”–from the Congo, Chad, Djibouti, and Sudan. They rented the vacant storefronts, and started new businesses. They built a new economy. In the whitest state in the country. They paid nearly $200 million in local state and local taxes in 2018–and I’m guessing the number continues to grow. This story is found in other places–Kennett Square, Pennsylvania (outside Philadelphia) “is now 50% Latinx, mostly from Mexico and it’s a community given new life by the families of migrant workers at the mushroom farms.” McGhee tells similar stories about Storm Lake, Iowa, and towns in the Texas Panhandle once considered hopeless, now beginning to thrive.

“Even in the face of anti-immigrant policies and the absence of vehicles for mobility such as unions and housing subsidies, today’s immigrants of color are revitalizing rural America.” In the first decade of the 21st century, nearly 83% of the growth of rural America is people of color. America is changing, but many us are missing the big story.

I’m grateful to Heather McGhee for opening my eyes. So far, The Sum of Us is the book I have most recommended to friends and colleagues in 2021. I’m feeling as though this might be essential reading for the early 21st century.

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CDs, LPs and the Future of a Record Label

June 3, 2021 by Leave a Comment

The problem is, we’re easily convinced to do foolish things. We started with a few very good ideas, but then, we followed the crowd.

The first of the good ideas goes back to Edison in the late 1880s: record about two minutes of sound on a rotating tube coated with wax. Technology improved: two minutes became three and four minutes; microphones were invented and allowed far greater fidelity by the 1920s, and, of course, the world adopted the 78rpm disc as the industry standard that became known as a “record.” By the late 1950s, the long-playing (“LP”) increased running time so that a full symphony or a Broadway cast recording could be presented on a single disc. By the 1950s, the 33 1/3 rpm disc became the industry standard as a record “album” (replacing the old album filled with several 78 rpm discs). The 45 rpm single came along at about the same time. With proper care, these plastic (vinyl) discs could last a very long time, but the combination of scratches (even with the best of care), and dust (few people washed their LPs, but today, many people do) gave the record industry good reason to pivot to a new format: CDs. And so, many of us re-bought the same titles we owned on LP and enjoyed what we had been led to believe was a more durable, better-sounding format. Smaller and portable, too. Then, we were convinced to re-buy our music track-by-track for inclusion on even smaller, more versatile listening devices, including iPods and later, our phones and iPads. And then, we were convinced that there was no need to own music, that subscribing to music was a much better idea. And for casual listening to popular music, it is, indeed, a better idea.

However. Only about half of recorded music is popular music. The other half is less popular, but often, more interesting. While everyone else seemed to be spending money on subscription services, I frequented record stores that sold large quantities of classical, opera, choral, jazz, Broadway, blues, folk, country, classic rock, and other forms of music for remarkably low prices. Nearly all in superb condition. Along the way, I became more enamored of music from the 1950s through the 1980s than contemporary work. Then, I started to think about that. What was I missing? What happened to the record label? Were there labels that were continuing to release interesting work that, somehow, I was not seeing online, not reading about in newspapers, not showing up on the counter of my local record store?

Yup! Pi Recordings is a very good example. There are others, and I will write about them as I continue to listen to the good work they’ve released, and continue to release, most often on–gasp!–CD.

If we go back a bit, record labels were associated with distinctive personalities. For example, Stax Records, in Memphis, released a particular type of soul music. Blue Note Records, in NYC, focused on small group jazz, then modern jazz. Chess Records, in Chicago, concentrated on blues and some R&B. Later, and ongoing, ECM Records, in Munich, Germany, developed a unique brand with a combination of avant-garde jazz and classical music with a modernist sensibility. Most former labels are now reduced to imprints, sub-brands within far larger companies, notably Concord and Universal. ECM Records remains independent, but it relies upon larger companies for marketing and distribution throughout the world. Larger companies may or may not respect the unique brand identity of the original label.

And so, back to Pi. Here is a modern label with a distinct personality, a reliably avant-garde profile with a consistent run of superb, modern, interesting, 21st century music. It is a delight to listen to each of the CDs, and to learn about a distinctive group of rather special artists.

This morning, I’ve been listening to one of Pi’s most consistent sellers, Verisimilitude by drummer/percussionist Tyshawn Sorey. It was recorded about five years ago, but no matter. It is fresh, filled with original ideas and a flow that makes for casual listening, background, or sit-up-and-pay-attention listening. It is abstract, it floats along, and I find myself writing for a while, then stopping to listen more carefully and playing a particular passage two or three times to get a better listen. It’s trio music. Chris Tordini is the bassist, and Corey Smythe plays piano, toy piano and electronic instruments. But…if you asked me to identify the instruments, or count them, I would find it difficult to answer because the sounds themselves are distinct, different from the usual concept of instrumental songs. Instead, it’s a soundscape, sometimes musical, sometimes something else that is provocative, intelligent and enjoyable, but does not require academic study for comprehension. It just feels modern, and it feels good. In fact, Sorey is both the modern musician and the academic–he is now on the faculty of The University of Pennsylvania, teaching composition. He is often offered as an exemplar of modern abstract music, the subject of magazine articles about contemporary music. And yet, his work is entirely accessible, and I’m thrilled to tell you that each of his Pi Recordings are worth owning. Uncertain? Watch the videos, but allow yourself the time and space to pay attention.

And yes, I wrote “owning” this music. Sure, that may be a divergent idea for 2021, but listening to this music with a good CD player and a good pair of headphones is a delightful way to spend a summer day. If you have the option don’t listen to this music on an inferior sound system. It’s all about the subtlety of sound, the feeling brought on by particular instruments and sound patterns. Pi Recordings are prepared, and produced, with such care, you’ll miss a lot if you’re not listening in the best possible way (not to say that the recordings are inferior on lesser systems, but there is so much here, and I want you to enjoy all of it). If I were to recommend a second purchase, I suppose it would be The Inner Spectrum of Variables, but there’s ample opportunity to sample a lot of his work online, so please, go explore.

I like the idea of “label-mates,” a term not so often heard these days. With Chess Records, I enjoyed listening to, say, Muddy Waters, and I trusted Chess to offer more good records by more good artists, so it was an easy jump to Willie Dixon or Howlin’ Wolf. I found Arvo Pärt because I trusted ECM’s musical judgement with regard to Keith Jarrett. With streaming services, we do have recommendation engines–if you liked this artist, then you’d like this one, too–but this is algorithmic, so it’s not based upon the creative instincts of label executives dedicated to the music. And there is a difference.

I trust Pi Recordings, so I’m more likely to open, say, a more ambitious release by, say, the Steve Lehman Trio. And when I hear Lehman’s alto sax meander through “Prelude,” which opens a 2019 recording called The People I Love, I’m primed to pay attention and enjoy. And suddenly, I’m following a line of musical thinking that leads me into “Ih Calam & Ynnus,” which begins calmly with Craig Taborn’s piano and quickly jumps into a far more abstract improvisation (sounds like an improvisation, anyway) with Damion Reed rolling through drums. Long lines, complex stuff, but Pi has built the necessary scaffolding. Things calm down with “Curse Fraction,” and if you’re getting the impression that is is, somehow, smart music, or music for smart people, maybe that’s part of the brand. Again, accessible and welcome, but the music does provide a bit of a ride. As it should. I feel as though I am listening to something new, extraordinary well-done, and crafted with the greatest of care. The sound mix on this track, for example, seems especially well-balanced–again, providing good reason for fully-engaged listening, again, preferably on a sound system that allows you to hear the artists’ work as it was played and recorded.

Trust matters. I like what I hear, so I trust the label and allow myself to listen to an artist whose name, instrument choice, style and sensibility is unfamiliar, even strange to me. So here’s Jen Shyu, who plays the 2-stringed Taiwanese Moon Lute, the 12-stringed Korean zither, the Korean gong, and the Javanese gamelan idiophone (that is, the gat kim, gayaguem, ggwaenggwari and kemanak), and sings in a combination of traditional and new ways. Accompanied by trumpet, viola, bass and drums, Sounds and Cries of the World is a multi-cultural musical enterprise. And it works. Like other titles in the growing Pi Recordings catalog, this one comes from an academic arts tradition, growing from the artist’s cultural studies with The Asia Society and the Asian Cultural Council. Given the wonderful popularity of Rhiannon Giddens, on Nonesuch, whose work (post Carolina Chocolate Drops) has been concerned with historical and cultural aspects of music from her heritage, music that grows from musicology doesn’t seem as strange or foreign as it did in the past century. And the combination of those sounds with more modern arrangements and practices makes the music even more interesting.

And the label continues to grow. There’s a new Jen Shyu album, just released, entitled Zero Grasses: Ritual for the Losses, and “devoted to the marginalized voices of women around the world.” Happily, this album follows Song of Silver Geese, which The New York Times recognized as one of the year’s best several years ago. Even more happily, you can listen to, and watch, the work of Jen Shyu by visiting Pi’s website.

This is no minor effort, this notion of a 21st century record label. There are now about 100 CDs in the Pi Recordings catalog. Included are several by long-time jazz leader Henry Threadgill–the label’s first artist, and Hafez Modirzadeh, a Professor of Creative/World Music at San Francisco State University, whose recent release, Facets, also features Craig Taborn and Tyshawn Sorey (when musicians play together in different combinations for the same label, sometimes, good things happen). That one’s on my list for future listening, as are the two albums by Miles Okazaki, the newer one, The Sky Below, and a very well-reviewed and well-regarded 2017 release called Trickster.

I could easily lose myself in a full summer’s exploration of the Pi Recordings catalog, catching up with what is likely to be even more new releases to accompany our post-pandemic world. Thing is, I find myself stopping everything else I’m doing in order to listen more carefully. To listen more carefully–isn’t that the reason for all of this? Streaming seems to me another way to say, listen less carefully. I prefer the Pi formula. Music is worth the time, and I am extremely appreciative of the effort, care, love, and intelligence that this (now 20-year-old) label has brought to the marketplace and the cultural landscape. Please listen. And buy yourself a CD today. (Or, listen via Bandcamp–these guys are living in the 21st century, and doing the best they can to keep a lot of plates spinning.)

Not incidentally, those guys do have names, an office and a website. They are Seth Rosner and Yulun Wang, their office is in Brooklyn, and you can learn more about them by visiting their About page, which leads to 2011 New York Times article about their story.






Filed Under: Audio, Creative, International, Learning, Music Tagged With: , ,

We Were Not Alone

February 2, 2021 by Leave a Comment

Seems like science fiction, but for a long time, Homo sapiens were not the only human beings on earth. And there were a lot of them. And they lived in a very large area that included most of Europe, much of Asia, and probably, in many other places, too (but we haven’t yet found the evidence). They were far more sophisticated than you might imagine, very similar to our own kind as we evolved, in parallel, from about 350,000 years ago until (fairly recently?) until about 40,000 years ago. If we extended our individual family trees back to that time, most or many of us would find parents, aunts, and uncles, and plenty of cousins who were Neanderthal or mixed with our own kind, and quite likely, mixed with other early humans, too (and, probably, other species). This is not some exotic scientific story. This is the story of our own lives. And no less messy.

This morning, I happened to see a cartoon drawing of two large bears inspecting a minivan. On the back window of the vehicle were stick figures of a human family. One bear remarks, “Look! A menu!” It’s not easy to study the Neanderthals, or other early hominids, because they were eaten, destroyed in battle and accidents, burned, and buried. In fact, buried is good–if you know where to look. So far, we’ve been lucky enough to find bones, tools, settlements, but not many of them. Still, it’s a start, and we’ll no doubt find a lot more throughout the 21st century as we improve our satellite imaging (for example). In the meantime, scientists and historians have figured out some parts of the puzzle. Bear in mind that humans have been pursuing archeology for just over 150 years–and for the first 50-100 years, there were a lot of questions about validity, integrity, and there was astonished disbelief because humans (and their religions) didn’t want to consider the possibility that we were not alone as a human race. Getting past the idea of a “missing link” between humans and apes was, and perhaps remains, a problem, too. And this is made more complicated because Neanderthals are “extremely similar creatures to us” but “many simultaneous pathways existed, some finishing in dead ends, others like Neanderthals developing their own unique bodies and minds that were a match from our own.”

I’m quoting Rebecca Wragg Sykes, a remarkably talented storytelling and scientific historian whose book, KINDRED: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art is an absolute delight. She keeps the story interesting (fascinating would be a better word), piling on the historical details, open questions, likely facts, and the vast vastness of things we don’t know. I love that.

So far, we’ve found about 250 Neanderthal bodies, or enough parts and pieces of bodies to develop some ideas about their lives. We will certainly find a lot more. Their brains and our brains–about the same size (“just as big and deliberating as your own”) Their brow–more expansive than ours. Their babies’ chins–less prominent, so our babies are, or were, probably cuter than their babies. Their eyes–bigger than ours, noting that “people from higher latitudes have eyeballs up to 20 percent bigger than those from near the equator.” Their ears–very similar to our own, inside and out. Their noses–certainly larger, so they could “snort in the air at almost twice the rate we do.” But why? Here’s the speculative layer that’s found throughout the book–questions about whether the larger nose provided greater airflow, more air filtering and conditioning, or a more powerful or refined sense of smell. “…in some ways, Neanderthals’ large internal structures resemble reindeer and saga antelope, which have extensive mucous membranes to reduce dehydration and heat loss…[but] the internal structures in Neanderthals appears to be worse at air conditioning than our own.”

There’s a strangeness about discovering Neanderthal life expressed in time and distance. They lived for several hundred years in an expanse from Spain to Siberia. When something is discovered about a particular body or settlement, one must consider not only where it was found but also when. That’s because cultures and communities are always in motion–so a place-based assumption may, in fact, be more of a time-based assumption. Think in terms of discovering a human body from the Middle Ages in France and another from two years ago in Vancouver, British Columbia, and making statements about their dental care, or their diet. Assumptions must be carefully considered. Now, expand the time scale from a thousand years to twenty thousand years–the assumptions become that much flakier.

Tools: “More artisans than klutzes, [Neanderthals] appreciated the right tools for the job. Selecting hammers…was crucial. Small cobbles have the necessary mass to hit hard for big flakes, but for more delicate work, pebbles are better. And using soft rather than hard hammers produces different effects. Elastic organic materials like antler and bone or even dense rock like limestone spread out the kinetic energy and produce thinner, longer flakes…Tools were often retouched, sometimes to give a particular edge, but often to resharpen them–flakes dull very fast even when cutting meat.” So: yes, Neanderthals made and used a variety of tools for a variety of purposes, just as we did, and do today. This suggests the range of activities they pursued–hardly anything as simple as hitting a bear with a wooden club, though they may have done that, too. They used wood to make spears: “far from pointed sticks…finely crafted from thin spruce and a single Scots pine, their tips are all at the stump end: the hardest part. The shafts were systematically carved off-center for increased strength…Experiments show that the shorter-throwing spears easily range to 30 meters (30 yards).”

Their diet was varied. “Beavers’ fatty tails would have been succulent treats…they certainly gorged on tortoises…dolphins, seal and large fish…ticks and lice might have been nibbled while grooming hair…Neanderthals hunted [bears] more than other predators…burning hints at cooking right there in the den.” They ate plants, too–pine, mushrooms, moss. They cooked stews. They soaked acorns, then boiled them, a far more sophisticated conception than eating only raw meat. They fermented food, one of many examples of planning and preparation.

I could go on through where they lived, how they raised their children and families, the art they made, their customs and care for the dead, and more. There is so much in KINDRED, and so much of it is captivating. And I am so looking forward to the next book from Ms. Sykes. I have found a new favorite author.

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Akin to the Internet, circa 1920

December 8, 2020 by Leave a Comment

One version of our story begins in 1874, midway between Cleveland and Buffalo, about 20 miles inland from Lake Erie, on the shore of Lake Chautauqua. Another version begins a half-century earlier, in 1826, in a town called Millbury, just south of Worcester, Massachusetts. The third takes shape in 1904 in Iowa and Nebraska, in part because small towns could now be reached by the railroads out of Chicago.

Here’s what happened.

“In an age when most Americans had acquired only a grade school education,” two educators who were involved with Sunday schools “recognized the power of education to elevate, enlarge and enrich lives.” They were Reverend John Heyl Vincent, a Methodist minister who had become Secretary of the Sunday School Union, and Lewis Miller, a former teacher who became a businessman (farm machinery) who served as the Superintendent of Sunday School and at his church and President of the Board of Education in his hometown of Akron, Ohio. Together, on the pretty shore of Lake Chautauqua, they put together a conference for 2,500 Sunday school teachers for two weeks during the summer of 1874, mostly to listen to lectures and seminars about religion. When they did it again the following year, they added music from the Tennesseans, who sang plantation songs from the American South, and non-religious lecturers, notably President Ulysses S. Grant (he had been a former parishioner at Miller’s church in Illinois). A year later, there were lectures about chemistry, geology, and astronomy.

When I visited Chautauqua in 2014, I wrote about the experience. If I had stayed the full nine-week season in 2019, I would have attended lectures by public radio’s Krista Tippett and Ira Glass; Middlebury College President Laurie L. Patton; comedians David Steinberg and Lewis Black; author and activist Bill McKibben; writer and author James Fallows; author of The Death and Life of the Great Lakes Dan Egan. I would have gone to concerts featuring Judy Collins, Madeleine Peyroux, Bela Fleck and Abigail Washburn, Diana Ross, the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis; and a lot of vocal and chamber groups whose names are unfamiliar. I would sit in on each morning’s lecture/sermon by a notable Chaplain, watched performances of several operas (The Barber of Seville, and Figaro), and just walked along the beautiful shore. If you’d like to imagine what you would have done, every season since 2007, follow this link and enjoy. They are now planning their 2021 summer season. And they’ve introduced an online version that I’ll write about in the future; it’s called Chautauqua Assembly.

Yes, it’s amazing that this bit of 1870s culture remains vibrant and remarkably successful 150 years after it began, but that’s only part of our story.

Now, let’s jump back to the late 1820s and 1830s–where the roots of today’s public radio reside (GBH began just ten years later). Somewhat similar to today’s TEDTalks, the Lyceum circuit provided lecturers to more than 3,000 theaters and public spaces all over the country. There were big stars on the circuit: Mark Twain, P.T. Barnum, Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and other U.S. Presidents, and lots of lesser-knowns. But there was a problem. No air conditioning. No climate control for hot indoor spaces during the summer–so the Lyceum circuit was, mostly, a wintertime activity. Until one day…

Keith Vauter, who managed western states and territories for a booking agency that supplied the Lyceum Circuit with talent, decided to try a new approach. The Chautauqua concept in upstate New York had inspired summer chautauquas in other places. He figured he could book his talent during the summer, and expand his business. His first attempt–in 1904–failed because the logistics of moving so many performers to so many locations was just too expensive. As Vauter improved the logistics and came up with a way for local communities to guarantee the cost of their own chautauqua, the concept took off. Borrowing ideas from traveling circuses, vaudeville, and theater troupes, they devised what became a very popular idea: the traveling chautauqua. At least until 1929, when a combination of talking motion pictures and the Depression more-or-less ended the fun. For about 25 years, traveling Chautauqua “served to provide small towns with a deeper sense of self, community, nation, the world, and God. They spanned the silent movie era, the Progressive Age, and the transportation shift from horse-and-buggy to automobile.”

There is great wisdom in the chautauqua movement, and in the Lyceum movement, and in their intermingled roots of what has since become radio, television, some of the Internet, some of the entertainment industry, and more. When I started to become curious, I found two extraordinary experts who knew the culture and the whole story. The first was Harry P. Harrison, who was among the first “platform superintendents” for the new Chautauqua circuit way back in 1903. He wrote, or dictated, a book to co-author Karl Detzer, a professional writer; it’s called Culture Under Canvas: The Story of Tent Chautauqua (published in 1958; I found an autographed copy for $3 in a used bookstore). The second is newer, written by a college professor who worked with music students in summer Chautauqua for many years. It’s called The Traveling Chautauqua, and the author is Roger E. Barrows. The material quoted in this article comes from that book.

So: what was it like, going to a tent chautauqua for a week in the 1920s?

From Missouri’s Joplin Globe: The most famous Chautauqua speaker was the founder of Temple University, Russell Conwell. Conwell is said to have given his “Acres of Diamonds” speech 6,150 times between 1882 and 1925. Much in the spirit of self-improvement found in chautauquas, Conwell emphasized that developing his talents and skills is what made a man successful — or diamonds could be found in one’s own backyard. He and perennial presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan were two of the most sought-after speakers.”

Harrison tells stories about the many performers who helped make his career. Barrows breaks it down by type of performer, provides many more pictures, and also includes excerpts from their scripts.

“Madame Ernestine Schumann-Heink sweeps onto the stage. She is a large woman whose presence dominates the platform. Her rich voice, with its wide range…begins with the spring aria from the Saint-Saens opera, Samson and Delilah.” (“When the movement began in 1874, all music was live.”) “To the perpetual spinning sounds of the piano, Madame Schumann-Heink becomes Gretchen at the spinning wheel, expressing her mounting heartache as she comes to realize the emptiness of Faust’s promises…Schubert’s art song travels from the Austrian metropolis of Vienna to the small towns of Texas and Ohio…The artist would later recount how, in the midst of her signing, she could hear the mooing of cows…”

Bohumir Kyrl, who had played with Sousa, conducted his own popular band and became a star performing on cornet. College girls, on an adventure for the summer, would sing classical, art, and popular songs. The Jubilee Singers (the Fisk University group was one of several) would “harmonize a cappella;” “they had heard tales of slavery from their parents’ laps, and…had personal experiences with racism, (as they expressed) the “anguish and sorrow of the original singers.” There were authentic Indian princesses who performed on piano, sang songs, and shared legends of their people. The Raweis were Native New Zealanders on tour through the American hinterlands. At a time when actors were not welcome in God-fearing small towns, Lucille Adams was an “interpreter,” also called a “reader,” who read and spoke expressively, but didn’t quite “act.” In time, the circuit tried a Shakespearean acting troupe led by Ben Greet, a legitimate Shakespearean actor, and they became popular, famous, and well-traveled, introducing Shakespeare’s work to audiences who had never seen anything quite like it. Eugene Laurent was a popular magician on the circuit.

There were cooking lessons, many lecturers who specialized in a loving life at home, and plenty of preachers. Billy Sunday was a former professional baseball player who converted to evangelical Christianity and became one of its most famous spokespeople. Lots of souls were saved in the chautauqua tents, of lives transformed. Many religions were represented; Rabbi Emil Hirsch of Chicago’s Sinai Congregation helped non-Jews understand his religion.

One of the most famous speakers relied upon religion with a more old-time flavor, not only for his tremendous success on the circuit but also as the basis for three runs for U.S. President–William Jennings Bryan, at the time, one of the best-known American citizens. (You’ll recall his name and presence from the Scopes Trial and the play, Inherit the Wind). Reformer Jane Addams was on the circuit in 1909 and 1919. Women’s suffrage was a hot topic on the circuit, too. Jeanette Rankin often spoke about that–she being the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress.

From 1909 to 1912, Peter MacQueen talked about his adventures hunting for big game with Teddy Roosevelt in Africa. Around the same time, Frederick A. Cook spoke–more than 350 times–and claimed to be the first man to reach the North Pole (Peary was second). Booker T. Washington spoke about progress through education at chautauquas around 1914, and a few years earlier, Florence Mayrick talked about her life in an English prison. When the chautauaqua was in town, everyone was elevated, educated, and thrilled. Truly, this was something special in towns where not much special happened very often.

And then, it was over. This huge chunk of American education for adults, and for the entire family, just went away. Radio took its place with an even wider variety of education, religion, entertainment and more. And then, television, and then, the internet.

The best way to experience a chautauqua is to buy a ticket for several days, or longer, for the original that still runs in New York State. The second best, which may be pretty darned good, is to find yourself a local chautauqua like the one that the Wythe Arts Council runs in Wytheville, Virginia, or the weekend festival in Madison, Indiana, or the one that feels intentionally old-fashioned in Mountain Lake Park, Maryland, an old B&O Railroad town and former resort that was, in the day, home to an original Chautauqua traveling show. As soon as things open up again, they’re on my list–and if you know of any others, please add them to the comments below.

AND–for even more fun–check this out! It’s an industry trade magazine from June 1922–and it’s chock full of advertisements, news stories, photographs, listings of booking agents, and so much more. The magazine is called Lyceum Magazine: For the Lyceum and the Chautauqua.

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Seeing 10 Years into the Future

October 11, 2020 by

Somehow, even in the shadow of the virus, we can see 2030 with surprising clarity. We know a lot, and we can make good guesses about much of what we don’t know. In fact, I’ve been doing this for several years, traveling the world, speaking to university audiences, explaining how and why Southern Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa are the places that today’s students must study because of their enormous population increases and their associated growth as consumer markets. I’ve been focused on the lives and futures of young people growing up in the 21st century, much of it connection with Kids on Earth, a global interview project, and my work as a Senior Scholar at The University of Pennsylvania.

In fact, it was a browse through a UPenn newsletter that led me to Professor Mauro F. Guillén, a colleague at UPenn’s Wharton School. About two months ago, Guillén published a book entitled 2020: How Today’s Biggest Trends Will Collide and Reshape the Future of Everything. My interest in children, teenagers, parents, and schools; his is business, economics and government, but our circles overlap with plenty of shared space.

For both of us, the key to the secrets of the 21st century is the number of babies being born, where they are being born, the number of people who are living long lives, and where they are living those lives. He sets the stage with the rapid growth of the world’s population: 3 billion by 1960, 4 billion by 1975, 5 billion by 1987, 6 billion by 2000, and 7 billion by 2010.

And then: “The reality is that by 2030 we will be facing a baby drought.”

Take a closer look: “for every baby born in the United States, 4.4 are being born in China, 6.5 in India, and 10.2 in Africa” and “improvements in nutrition and disease prevention in the poorest parts of the world have made it possible for an increasing number of babies to reach adulthood and become parents themselves.” And so, by 2030: “South Asia (including India) will consolidate its position as the number-one region in terms of population size. Africa will become the second-largest region, while East Asia (including China) will be relegated to third place. Europe, which in 1950 was the second largest, will fall to sixth place, behind Southeast Asia…and Latin America.”

If 21st-century governments were more open to immigrants, the trends could equalize, but they’re going in the opposite direction–limiting incoming populations from countries whose people they need in order to maintain not only sufficiently large populations but also sufficiently young ones. That is, Europe and The United States will become increasingly old–which is terrible for the economy (the success of Social Security in the U.S., for example, relies upon income from the younger population, which disappears if there aren’t enough babies and aren’t enough immigrants). As we make these (okay, the correct word really is “stupid”) decisions, we are making an economic and social mess for ourselves.

It’s always instructive to study maps. One of my current favorites compares the size of the African continent with various countries. If you move the countries around like jigsaw puzzle pieces, you can fit all of China into the part of Africa that’s south of the equator, with all of India and all of the United States, and Eastern Europe, and France, Germany, and Spain, and still find enough space on the continent for The U.K., Japan, Italy, Switzerland, and a bunch of other countries. It’s not easy to think clearly about Africa, or any other place unless you understand its size, its history, and its potential for the future. Incredibly, people in the countries listed above know very little about Africa (challenge yourself: how many African countries can you name? how many cities?)

Perhaps women will think more clearly than men have done. This is the other huge trend: women graduating from higher education, with more advanced degrees than men, and gradually gaining power in both industry and government. They marry later–average age of first time mothers is now 28 years old. For example, “in the 1950s, about 7 percent of women between the ages of 25 and 29 had a college degree, half the rate of men. Nowadays, the proportion of women with a college degree is 40 percent, while the figure for men is only 32 percent.”

Now, let’s think about old age. People really are living longer–science, medicine, biotech, nutrition, hygiene, education, social programs–everything contributes to longevity. “By 2030, the average 70 year old will live like today’s average 50 year old.” We’ll be aided by robotics, and devices that make it easier to climb stairs, maintain balance, diagnose disease more quickly, and more–all of this takes shape during the current decade. In many ways, this is driven by necessity. For example, “by 2025, Japan will need 1 million nurses the country currently doesn’t have.” In the U.S., as in most countries, “about 90 percent of paid senior care is done by immigrants”–but our present-day policies are limiting the number of available workers. If Japan solves the problem with robots–a significant current effort–perhaps the U.S. will benefit.

Forget about “keeping up with the Joneses.” Now, we’re “keeping up with the Singhs and the Wangs.” Forget about your current notions of cities as a great place to live and work. (We’re seeing this in the real estate market as many people leave the crowded cities for locations with fewer people, less crowding, and increasingly excellent services.) Many cities exist near bodies of water, and with climate change, water levels are rising, and storms are causing chaos. Also on the subject of water, several cities in India are illustrating a nasty future in which water supply is insufficient for population needs. (“A majority will face formidable challenges related to pollution, congestion, and security. The cities most exposed to climate change will suffer from a shortage of freshwater and an excess of saltwater.”) Less so, perhaps, for food needs as vertical farming is becoming to take hold. And yet, some cities are flourishing–even during the pandemic, and hopefully, afterwards–because of creative class and knowledge workers–but these are precisely the folks who can work just about anywhere.

Present-day assumptions about ownership may be giving way to newer assumptions about sharing (a phenomenon slowed by the pandemic). Assumptions about the ways money and banking work are also taking shape in new ways–look at the progress made by PayPal, Venmo, and credit cards in a marketplace where so many people are now reluctant to handle paper currency and coins. We may be seeing the end of non-digital money by 2030.

I like the quote from William Faulkner that begins the end of the book: “You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.” So here we are, stuck in the pandemic, questioning whether we all ever return to the old normal, strikingly unaware of so many of the realities already in the “high likelihood” category for 2030. We’ve already lost sight of the shore; we just haven’t accepted that reality.

The author’s suggestion that we “approach uncertainty with optimism” may be the only approach that makes sense in what is now a fairly crazy world of the future.

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The Constitution Song

August 16, 2020 by Leave a Comment

Excellent work by an old friend and his creative team. The Constitution Song is the first project for Tublius™, an initiative by Peter Shane to popularize the history and interpretation of the U.S. Constitution through online photographic, video, musical, and prose presentations.

Please take a few minutes to watch, learn about the Constitution, and its vital importance. Then, share.

We will make progress in November if everyone adds their voice today.

Thankfully, there is a website that comes complete with the lyrics and explanations. Sure wish I had something similar for Hamilton! For example…

Add your voice!

Add your voice!

Add your voice

To the Constitution Song!

Americans whipped the British and secured their independence.

  • The American Revolution was fought between 1775 and 1783. The colonies declared their independence from Britain on July 4, 1776.
  • That didn’t guarantee a country fit for their descendants.

The states at first agreed to just a loose confederation.

  • The first version of the United States of America operated under an agreement among the states called, “The Articles of Confederation,” written in 1777 and ratified in 1781. It described the union as a “league of friendship” among sovereign states. The Articles authorized a one-House Congress to conduct foreign policy, maintain armed forces and coin money. However, Congress lacked the power either to raise taxes or to regulate commerce. There was no separate executive branch to enforce the law, and Congress could create no courts other than admiralty courts.

They didn’t have the unity it takes to forge a nation.

So four years after wartime,

  • The American Revolution is generally dated from 1775, with the confrontations at Lexington and Concord, until 1783, when the Treaty of Paris was signed, and the Constitutional Convention took place in 1787. The Battle of Yorktown, the decisive last battle of the war, was actually fought from September 29 to October 19, 1781. With the help of the French, George Washington was able to lay siege to the army of British General Charles Lord Cornwallis, eventually surrounding them with artillery until Cornwallis was forced to surrender. It took fifteen months, however, to agree on all treaty provisions, in part because the American alliance with France and the French alliance with Spain meant that a full armistice required Britain to reach acceptable terms with all three countries.

Philly saw a secret meeting

  • Following a navigation dispute with Maryland, Virginia called for representatives of all the states to convene at Annapolis on September 11, 1786. Only five states showed up, however, and so, as suggested in a report drafted by Alexander Hamilton, they wound up recommending a convention of all the states to be held in Philadelphia to consider potential improvements to the Articles of Confederation. The Philadelphia delegates were fearful that, given the precarious state of the Confederation, premature publicity of tentative proposals might doom the Convention to failure and discourage the delegates from speaking freely and even changing their minds as discussions proceeded. They decided to close the doors to the public and agreed to a pledge of secrecy, which apparently was all but entirely kept.

Of men who knew without a change, their freedom would be fleeting.

Their government was feeble. It needed a solution.

In sixteen weeks, they hammered out a U.S. Constitution.

  • The convention met from May 25 to September 17, 1787.

(and so it continues…)

Watch the video. It’s fun! And the guy you’ll be learning from, well, he’s among the best there is.

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Number Five

August 9, 2020 by Leave a Comment

Finally! A good biography of the fifth U.S. president, James Monroe!! When I started reading presidential biographies, in order, I figured there might be some patches where no decent and recent biography would be available, but I certainly wasn’t expecting a hard stop at number five. Tim McGrath to the rescue–with his 586-page doorstop, James Monroe: A Life. After I read what turned out to be a strong, well-written biography, my appetite wasn’t sated. After reading Ron Chernow’s Washington: A Life, David McCullough’s John Adams, John B. Boles’ recent Jefferson: Architect of American Liberty (which I reviewed in 2017), Lynne Cheney’s James Madison: A Life Reconsidered, along with books about John Marshall, also reviewed here, Hamilton, and others,  I realized how little I knew about a man who was very much a part of the founding story, but then disappeared–Aaron Burr. Fortunately, I found a very good (used) book, Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr by Nancy Isenberg. Now, the pieces of the puzzle fit together in a way that makes more sense to me. I have much more to learn, but Burr was a missing piece for me–and I’ll thank multiple viewings of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton: An American Musical for piquing my curiosity.

Let’s start with Burr, the man who might have been our fourth, or perhaps, our fifth U.S. president. In fact, Burr was very much in “the room where it happened” throughout much of his political career–a mover and shaker who managed to pull himself up from tragedy, as Hamilton did. Both men were serious political operators, very appealing, with active sexual lives–Burr kept a diary of his sex life, apparently not unusual at the time. Burr was born entitled. His father was the first president of what became Princeton University, and when he died, Aaron Jr.’s grandfather (his mother Esther’s father), the preacher Jonathan Edwards, took the job. Shortly after, young Aaron nearly died but somehow survived. Months later, his mother Esther and her father Jonathan were gone, followed by Esther’s mother, Sarah. The story begins, as it does with Alexander Hamilton, with our hero as an orphan. And, as with his real-life rival Hamilton, Burr becomes a distinguished attorney, supports a Revolutionary War general (though Hamilton’s prestigious connection with Washington outshines Burr’s with Stirling), and becomes deeply involved in New York State politics, and the national scene. Eventually, Burr becomes the nation’s third Vice President–to Jefferson–but there’s a problem. Jefferson does not wish to see Hamilton as the nation’s fourth President; instead, he prefers his friend and neighbor, James Madison. This complicated storyline eventually places James Monroe–who was closely allied with both Jefferson and Madison, as Number Five. Along the way, all of these dudes made incredibly stupid decisions in their personal lives but figured out how to build and grow a new nation. Over more than two centuries, mythology overwhelmed the Burr story, and Professor Isenberg gets a lot of credit for weeding out the nonsense and trying to set the story straight.

Burr didn’t think much of Monroe–“he called the last President in the Virginia Dynasty ‘naturally dull & stupid–extremely illiterate,’ ‘indecisive…pusillanimous & of course hypocritical,” and “observing that he never ‘commanded a platoon or was every fit to command one.” And… “as a lawyer, Monroe was ‘far below Mediocrity…” His ‘character exactly suited… the View of the Virginia Junto,’ which “maintained itself on sycophancy instead of recruiting men of “Talent and Independence.” Jumping from the book about Burr to the book about Monroe, Burr’s criticism was bombastic and colorful, but it contains a fair amount of truth.

The problem with Monroe is that he was more of an ordinary man than a legendary character–and he was our first president with that particular characteristic. Author McGrath makes the best of that situation and tells a good story about an essentially good man’s life in the midst of revolutionary change and a new nation.

For example…18-year old Lieutenant Monroe crossed the Delaware River with General Washington. Interesting story: in December 1776, while leading his men, as quietly as possible, from the landing site down into Trenton, a dog barked, and the dog’s owner, John Riker, came out to see what was happening. When he heard the men’s Virginia accents, he welcomed them as revolutionaries, offered them food, and insisted on joining them in Trenton. Lt. Monroe did his best to dissuade Dr. Riker because he was losing valuable time and did not want to show up late for the sneak attack on the Hessian mercenaries in Trenton. Riker came anyway. Monroe was wounded by a cannonball; it opened his chest. Dr. Riker saved his life.

Monroe’s family was prosperous and well-connected, but his parents died while he was still a teenager. He had some land, an interest in speculating in more land, rather poor financial management instincts, an interest in law, and a knack for politics. By 1787, he was a member of the Virginia state assembly, and by 1790, he was a U.S. Senator. Politically, he stood with Madison and Jefferson (his former law instructor), against the forces of Adams and Hamilton. Three years later, he was the U.S. Minister to France, skillful in rebuilding and managing relationships in Paris, but often overwhelmed because he was often excluded from policy discussions, and never quite figured out how to work his way back into the conversation–and anything he did try to accomplish created problems with the Federalists. When Adams became president, Monroe was recalled, and shortly after, became Virginia’s governor.

When Madison finished his second term, Monroe was ideally positioned to become the fifth president. By that time, the U.S. and Britain were again at war, and there was no guarantee that the United States would remain viable as a unified nation. Author McGrath describes some astonishing scenes of “Washington City” in ruins as a result of successful British attacks–and Monroe’s attempts to keep government and family together, and safe. As the war fades from view, Monroe and his Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, and a somewhat out-of-control general Andrew Jackson push the Spanish away from Florida and consolidate power while building relationships with newly independent South American nations. Seeing opportunity and potential political salvation, Aaron Burr’s meanderings weave in and out of the story, more so in Isenberg than in McGrath, another reason to read both books together.

In short, the Monroe book is a well-told story of a transition–the era of the founders is fading, and Monroe represents their last huzzah, and the era of U.S. expansion is beginning in earnest, as the U.S. begins to become, if not a world power, than a controlling influence on its hemisphere. And that helps to explain how and why Monroe was able to issue a doctrine to stop the Europeans from messing around in our part of the world. Think of his doctrine more as a capstone, less of a disruption. The world was moving on.

A post-script: The University of Virginia’s Miller Center offers a fine biography of James Monroe, in several sections, on its website. In fact, the work on Monroe is a small part of a massive biographical, historical and contextual series of essays about every U.S. president: Life in Brief, Life Before the Presidency, Campaigns and Elections, Domestic Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Death of the President, Family Life, The American Franchise, and Impact and Legacy.

 

 

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The RSA: Climate Change Requires Immediate Attention

April 24, 2020 by Leave a Comment

I’m always impressed with The RSA’s animations. This one was just released. It tells an important and urgent story about climate change. Acknowledging the nastiness of dealing with two catastrophes at the same time, this video runs less than five minutes–and the visuals bring the topic to life.

Be safe, everyone.

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Jeffrey Sachs Talks about the U.S. and the World

April 13, 2020 by Leave a Comment

 

Sachs sees the world very clearly. After watching these 11 minutes, I know more about the world than I did before.

For a more comprehensive explanation of multilateralism, I refer to this Brookings article.

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