The 9 to 5 Life of an International Playboy
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This message was brought to you by Lightroom, Perl, Aquamacs Emacs, and Cyberduck.
I love farm toys. My grandfather used to build the real tractors in Waterloo for John Deere, and he would give us 1/16 scale toys when we were kids. After he retired, he decided to rebuild an old Oliver, just to keep busy.
While we were in Billings, we stopped into Action Toys, the best little farm toy store in the world. Here are the fruits of my most recent trip. (Yes, I have a spending limit when I go in.)
So what do we have here?
The tractor pulling the planter is a John Deere 9420T with 425HP engine. I didn’t buy it this trip, but there’s no way the Agco’s 200ish horsepower engine is going to get the field planted, especially when it’s been raining.
Today we went to the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming. It’s a lot of fun, with a little something for everyone.
Longs Peak - Rocky Mountain NP (Click for larger)
The early part of our travels led us to the northwestern-most point of the first federally funded expedition to the west which included professionally trained scientists and artists. Unlike the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804-1806, the infamous Zebulon Pike trip to Colorado and the myriad Army Topographic Corps expeditions of the mid-to-late nineteenth century, the western journeys of Major Stephen Harriman Long doesn’t seem to have stuck in the American imagination.
If he’s remembered at all, he’s usually referenced as “that guy who called the Great Plains the ‘Great American Desert’ on his map” or “that guy who climbed Longs Peak.” It’s unfortunate because he blazed a trail for later expeditions that, like his, mixed scientific inquiry and artistic depiction in equal measure. Of course, they also brought their early 19th century prejudices about agriculture, science and scenery with him, thus leading Long not to recognize one of the most biologically diverse and rich ecosystems in the world while he trod over the short-grass prairies.
If you’re interested in learning more about Major Long’s 1819-1820 expedition, you might consider reading “Sandy Wastes:” Exploring and Experiencing the Great Desert, a paper I wrote for an environmental history class about six years ago and then submitted with my graduate school applications. Here’s a short excerpt from the concluding remarks:
[Major Long] inadvertently interfered in the emerging manifest destiny of Americans to overrun the continent. The effective western border he seemed to propose reached barely half-way across the possible extent of the nation. While it is possible that he did slow expansion to the Plains, within three decades a torrent of migrants would make their way through the region and draw their own conclusions. Indeed . . . the idea of the West as a garden held more currency among Long’s contemporaries than the idea of a desert West.
The early appraisals of the West given by Long and other naturalists are complex and require careful consideration, especially when viewed in conjunction with their own scientific evidence which seemed to contradict their conclusions. The volumes of textual, visual, and physical data generated by the explorers ultimately yielded a fairly balanced view of the Plains: a region that is at once hot and dry and yet well-adapted to life, just not necessarily human life. In this respect Long’s conclusions about the habitability of the region prefigured John Wesley Powell’s conclusions about the need for irrigation to aid development in his 1876 Arid Lands report. Moreover, Long blazed the trail for a new type of federally-sponsored western expedition that included scientists, artists, and (later) photographers as an integral part of balanced exploration. Though these explorers were often serving the utilitarian and imperial interests of the state, like Long they strove to help an expanding nation understand and create itself by looking at the land. The conclusions of Long’s party indicate the role of ideological orientation and expectation in the creation of place at the same time that they caution against trusting our initial reactions to alien environments.
First off, to all my Canadian brethren and sistren, happy Canada Day. I’m still not 100% sure what you’re celebrating, but I’m glad that our Civil War scared you into confederation. Sorry if you thought we were gunning for you after that whole “54º40′ or fight” business.
Denver Convention Center - Click for larger
Anyway . . . We’re only two days into our trip and already having a great time. We just returned from an evening of baseball at Coors Field.
It’s been a while since I saw a really good game. Lisa and I prefer well-pitched games with good defense and a bit of drama. So we were very happy when the Rockies’ Aaron Cook pitched a beautiful, complete-game shutout with just 79 pitches in a shade less than two hours. It’s not like the Padres played poorly either. They had some great defensive plays. The losing pitcher just had a bad fifth inning: four runs on three hits, a fielder’s choice, an errant throw by the shortstop and three stolen bases.
The Colorado Rockies’ park is very nice, and Lisa found us great seats. The weather this evening accommodated us, too. It’s too bad there wasn’t a bigger crowd in the house.
Tomorrow we’re heading to Rocky Mountain National Park. Despite living in Wyoming for several years, I’ve never been there. It looks very pretty from the pictures I’ve seen. We’ll need a little respite after the eventful day we’ve had.
Colorado Capitol Building, Denver - Click for larger
Yes, it was a very busy, hectic day. Let’s see. On account of a small bit of jet lag we got up a bit earlier than expected and had to stand in line with the young urban hipsters at Starbucks on their way to work. (No one here really understands how to pair shoes with an outfit.) Instead of going to the office we toured the Colorado Capitol. It’s kind of quaint. Government was not in session, so the building had the feel of a ghost town. I think we saw a tumbleweed blow through the rotunda. Everything is gilded, but they don’t have a bronze cod hanging from in the assembly chamber; so chalk another one up for the Mass State House.
Pioneer Mother, Denver - Click for larger
Just outside, we saw the “Closing of an Era” statue. If you believe the symbolism in the statuary, you might think that Native Americans killed the last bison and thus hastened their own doom. Compare and contrast that with the heroic pioneer woman holding a rifle and raising a child. (Your 2000 word essay is due by the end of the week.)
Closing of an Era, Denver - Click for larger
We continued our Western art historical adventure a few blocks away at the Denver Art Museum, which has a nice collection of Western American art. The rest of the collection befits a city of its size, but it feels a bit hodgepodge in places. Of course, we’re spoiled by the Boston arts environment, which is significant but very little compared to New York.
Western Art, Denver - Click for larger
I have mixed feelings about Western American art. Much of it is backward-looking, sentimental and overly romanticized; yet there are strains within “traditional” Western art that provide wonderful insight into how we experience and imagine the West. Plus there’s a lot of technical and artistic virtuosity in the genre as well. And I really love the landscape art of the West, especially the pieces by artists who show the West as it actually was in their time. I like the re-castings, re-imaginings, and re-examinations of the mythic place. After all, I do believe in the West and the Plains as places distinct from the much of the rest of the country. There’s something in the soil, the rocks and the sky and in the way we came about taking possession of it and struggle to hold onto it . . . or even know it.
Black American West Museum, Denver - Click for larger
Those who know us probably won’t be surprised that after some lunch we took a walk north from downtown, past an invisible red line, to take in the Black American West Museum. I had read a little bit about the “Exodusters” in Nell Irvin Painter’s fantastic Standing and Armageddon, but I really didn’t understand just how much the experience of African Americans in the West mirrored the experiences of almost every other non-indigenous group that emigrated in the 19th and 20th centuries. Doctors, miners, farmers, cowpokes, rodeo cowboys, soldiers, homesteaders, inventors, business owners — not to mention the obvious: fathers, mothers, children, laborers, strugglers — this museum presented a wealth of photographs, documents, and artifacts that showed African Americans chasing and creating the same American Dream that shows up in whitewashed histories and entertainment. It also played down overt racism and suggested that the West was much more egalitarian that those same mainstream sources suggest.
So if you’re in Denver for the Democratic convention or just passing through like us, take a walk up California Street or a short trolly ride to the museum. It’s worth it.
It’s time for me to own up to something: I possess a much larger than average collection of books and notes about the Indian Removal Act, the Early National Period, and the Nullification Crisis. Like Louis P. Masur, I think 1831 was one of the most interesting years in American history. Through a variety of contemporaneous events, we can start to see a nation moving beyond its revolutionary zeal, becoming something like the America we know today while also sowing the seeds (in the Nullification Crisis) of extralegal struggles over state rights and eventually war.
(And I guess it’s time for me to admit that when I sat on a Bahamian beach soaking up the warm winter sun in December 1999, I was reading a 1924 copy of Benjamin H. Hibbard’s A History of the Public Land Policies. Yep, it was a strange time for me.)
One of the things I love about studying American history is seeing the evolution of the “American Character” — which I believe actually exists, for better or worse (mostly for the better) — or at least the expression of various recurring aspects of an ever-changing character. It’s something I can’t satisfactorily explain even to myself as I stare dimly across the unbridgeable void to the past; but at times I feel like it wouldn’t be much harder to relate to a Midwesterner of the early 19th century than one from today.
Yet, despite being a Westerner who knew militia folks and who thought for a while that federal laws made by D.C. bureaucrats and Northeastern elites were at best advisory when applied to a wild place like Wyoming, I still have trouble grasping the fire and passion in the mid-18th century over states’ rights conflicts, abolition, and Indian Removal. I can understand but not feel the ardor of the Second Great Awakening, which helped inspire the latter two. (For that matter, I can barely understand 1968 and am pretty sure I would have been a conservative square.)
Anyway, let’s bring this rambling reminiscence to a halt and get to the point. In 2000 I wrote a paper that examined Andrew Jackson’s differing reactions to the Marshall Court’s 1832 ruling in Worcester v. Georgia (in which he nullified the Supreme Court’s decision to exert Federal supremacy over states’ right regarding so-called “Indian removal”) and the Nullification Crisis (when he was ready to send federal troops to South Carolina to enforce an act of Congress.)
I never got around to revising it when I applied to grad schools in 2002, opting instead to go with a paper I was writing at the time about the western journeys of Major Stephen H. Long. (Perhaps I would have had better results if I had.) But if you can stand a few rough edges, you might be interested in reading To Raise Up an Interesting Commonwealth: Jackson’s Reaction to Worcester and Nullification.
If you’re in the U.S., I hope you enjoyed your Memorial Day.
Lisa and I went to the Old Burial Hill in Marblehead today, where Lisa took this picture:
In Memory of James Dennis Hammond
He was one of the Heroes of the Frigate Constitution and having been wounded in the capture of the Java he received a pension from his grateful Country untill his decease which happened Oct. 24, 1840 at the age of ?4 years 10 mos. & 14 days.
I’ve been reading a lot. That’s the benefit, I guess, of only having one class last semester. And I want to share with you some recommendations.
But before that, here’s a simple request. Currently I’m between books and having a hard time figuring out what to read next. Classes don’t start for another three weeks, and I have the ambition to read something on the longer side. So maybe I should read that book that Leslie suggested: Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Then again, I still have The Plot Against America from the last time I went to the bookstore; and I’m trying to do better about reading what I buy.
What do you think? What should I read next?
Okay, here are my recommendations. Just be aware: I’m rubbish at giving short synopses that don’t totally suck the life out of whatever I’m recommending.
Apex Hides the Hurt by Colson Whitehead. An enjoyable novella about names, branding, growth, change, race, and (ultimately) ourselves. Tantalasia: “An emotional state, that muted area between desire and consummation.”
Willing by Scott Spencer. You might think I’d be apprehensive about recommending a novel about a down-on-his-luck author who goes undercover to take a high-priced sex tour, since it makes me sound a bit bawdy and the description will likely drive all sorts of unexpected traffic to my site. But I’m a sucker for a well-told, ambiguous morality tale that attempts to divine what our morals are in the Internet age. (p.s. - What’s up with not using quotation marks in fiction these days?)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling. I have to admit that I like Harry Potter. I came to the party late — mostly because Lisa wanted to talk to me about book #5 — but I was very anxious for its release last year. If I remember right, I read the whole thing in, like, 20 minutes.
The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. Timothy Egan wrote an amazing book about the plow that literally broke the prairie and the folks on the southern Great Plains who toughed out the Dust Bowl. That period of American history is far, far worse than I had fathomed.
China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power. Rob Gifford is my everyday hero: smart, self-deprecating, ruggedly handsome. All of these fine attributes come through in the travelogue of his cross-China trip. Along the way he talks to politicians, dissidents, students, farmers, hermits, truckers, hookers, entrepreneurs, . . . everybody. And as NPR’s long-time China correspondent, he draws from a deep, deep well of knowledge and cultural sensitivity.
Terra Nullius: A Journey Through No One’s Land by Sven Lindqvist. Perhaps there’s something that gets lost in the translation of this book; yet despite its imperfect execution, it is a very thought-provoking treatise on collective guilt, reparations, and the legal fictions Europeans used to justify taking other people’s land. I was amazed to learn that Australians are just like Americans, only more so.
Foto: Modernity in Central Europe, 1918-1945. It would have been hard for this thick catalogue from a really wonderful exhibit at the National Gallery of Art to disappoint. But strange things happen in the world of art catalogues. Sometimes the images from the exhibit aren’t in the books. Or there’s no text. Or the text that does appear is hopeless art speak. This book has none of those problems. It’s as fresh as the Central European photographs it covers.
One of my colleagues frequently needs relationship advice. We do our best and give generously, but we’re a diverse lot so the quality varies. As for myself, most of what I’ve learned about “going steady” I learned from a short pamphlet from the 1950s that I found in the Kelly Walsh High School guidance counselors’ office when I worked there in the summer of 1994. I present a scanned version of Understanding the Other Sex by Lester A. Kirkendall and Ruth Farnham Osborne with the hope that it might be useful.
Click on any page for a larger image. . . .
