Gothic Architecture and Cathedrals, Week One

In all my years of studying history, Gothic cathedrals have always ranked fairly high in my interests. Travel and personal experience in these environs have only made it better (or worse if you find yourself awkwardly in a long, rambling conversation with me about cathedrals because that's just not normal conversation fodder). I've always imagined teaching a class such as this to high school level students, but the need arose to adapt it to a younger age group. After the first class, it has the potential to be fabulous or the weirdest class my group of 6th to 8th graders have taken up to this point. I had some terrible technical difficulties which resulted in a horrifically drawn map of medieval Europe on a white board. My mapping skills include loosely labeled blobs in the vaguest set of generalities known to man. I doubt the kids will forget my mad skills any time soon.

That being said, the question for any study of history is where to begin. History is not just a bland listing of facts. It has layers. Much like ogres and onions. Donkey and Shrek may have been speaking of emotions but I've always felt the conversation could have really been about the study of history. I can't hold history to such a serious, academic nature all the time, so you get a Shrek link, because, frankly, history can be the worst. So, I went hardcore and presented 800 years of history in one class. Bless their hearts. 

When we talk about centuries, we say, for example "the 6th century" and you would think that means the 600s, but it doesn't. It was all the dates in the 500s. The 400s are all the 5th century,  all the 700s are the 8th century, etc. I still have to stop and think about it after all these years. For this class, the majority of the 11th and 12th centuries are the Gothic architecture years, so the 1000s and the 1100s. However, we start before year 100 AD and the the Apostle Paul. To explain the world view of the Middle Ages (500-1500 AD), you have to go back a bit. The Bible was the most influential writing of this time period. The foundation of medieval theology are the letters of Paul and a life lived by faith, which is necessary to a Christian life. A good chunk of the background of this class came from this book: 

The basic constructs of medieval life were faith (letters of Paul), civic duty (Romans 13:1-6), an attitude towards women that was subordinate and yet recognized as of great importance to the community, and that both the New Testament and Old Testament were of equal importance; being the complete story of Christ: the times leading to his birth, his life, and then after death. Paul made the connection between the Old and New Testaments in Romans 5:12-16. Medieval people believed Jesus came as the "second Adam" and since there was no Mrs. Jesus medieval scholars made Mary the "second Eve," the giver of the life of Jesus as Eve was the giver of life. The book of Hebrews presents Jesus as a Priest and a King which was a staple for medieval Christian theology.

The second greatest influence on medieval culture was ancient Greece, specifically Plato and Aristotle. This is called "classicism" and it is part of medieval life in art, literature, philosophy, and theology. Plato's works were about "the idea of life" and "the experience of life" follows the thoughts of Aristotle. This is where I modified the class for the younger age level. There's no way to adequately explain the importance of Greek thought and the scholasticism that evolved from this combining of Christian faith to produce the worldview that pervaded the Middle Ages. It is important to note because later on the great Gothic cathedrals were given inspiration by the scholars of that time, which were predominantly monks. 

Now the time line picks up, and we gallop foreword in history.

303AD: Diocletian is the Roman emperor. He was concerned that his subjects were more loyal to their Christian faith than they were to him. It is under his rule that the most severe persecutions of Christians took place. 

• Martyrdom and Sainthood: according to dictionary.com, the basic definition of a martyr is "a person who willingly suffers death rather than renounce his or her religion." The most revered saints of the Catholic church were martyred in this period: Lucy, Margaret, Vincent and Sebastian. These martyrs were given a special status to be remembered. They were made saints; those who are in heaven and eternally in God's favor. Later on when persecution ended, sainthood was extended to those who had lived an exemplary Christian life. This class of sainthood was called "confessors."

306-337AD: Constantine becomes emperor and he recognizes that Diocletian's persecution of the church did not help unify the empire. He believes that unifying the church will help unify his lands under his rule.

313AD: Constantine establishes the Edict of Milan making Sundays as holidays, exempting the clergy from government service, and because he was an all around great guy, he eliminated the branding of the face as punishment because humans are made in the image of God. He also gave property and buildings to the church.

325AD: Constantine saw these things helped in unifying his empire, but it just wasn't quite as organized or successful as he had hoped. He decided that in order for the church to help him, he needed to help the church. He called together the First Ecumenical Council where Constantine and the church leaders put together a statement of core beliefs that was called the Nicene Creed. 

Over the following years, Constantine's sponsorship of Christianity let to it's spread across the empire and beyond. Constantine declared Christianity the only legal religion, going so far as to restrict military and civic service to Christians. 

 

391AD: Theodosius becomes the first emperor to persecute heretics.Problem: If you can't get a job unless you are a professing Christian and now it's illegal to be anything but Christian, do you think some of those people simply became "Christian" just to live peacefully? As Christianity spread, it took on bits and pieces of pagan religion- like our holidays of Easter and Christmas have a pagan origin- and later on we will be discussing Gothic architecture in Ireland, where we will see a slightly different take than continental Europe. 

Now that Christianity is now "safe" and "unified" how does medieval life change? They now have time to *cough* pontificate.

Persecution no longer exists, so how does a person prove how far they are willing to go for Christ?

In 251AD, a man named Antony was born and he took the parable of the rich man and went extreme. He adhered to a Christian version of asceticism, a vigorous self-denial of worldly pleasures, which was sometimes viewed as a kind of "daily martyrdom." This lifestyle demanded its members to remove themselves from society to devote themselves to Christ's service, which began as simply seeking God in his word, but grew over hundreds of years to becoming scholars, educators, setting up hospitals, and other charity work. Men went to monasteries and women went to nunneries.

520AD: St. Benedict of Nursia drew up detailed rules for monks and organized the lives of those who lived in monasteries for the next 500 years. He set out to make sure monks spent their days efficiently and did not become lazy or bored, believing this led man away from God. This day in the life of a Benedictine monk blew the minds of kids in class. So. Much. Church... according to my 6th to 8th grade boys.

So now, Christianity is organized, the empire is organized, and now the monasteries are helping organize medieval life on the community level. People can live and move about, and where they go, Christianity goes with them. 

768-814AD: Charlemagne has arrived, conquering most of the western Christian continental Europe. His concept of Christian empire was him at the head, using a combination of education and religious uniformity, which is often referred to as the Carolingian Renaissance, making his reign the most important in medieval history.

Charlemagne was a highly educated man for that time, deeply committed to the study of theology and learning. He encouraged monasteries to become places of learning. He believed that living a well ordered life was good, but education only made life better.

Everything we have covered here is the foundation of medieval culture. The church was used for good (and not so good) to give the society structure. Once again, for those that did not choose a monastic or nun lifestyle, the question once again became how is a person supposed to prove their devotion to Christ? One way was for them to set out on a pilgrimage. Many people hoped that making a journey like that would bring them forgiveness for their sins or heal them of their afflictions. A pilgrimage was a physical representation of a person's search for spiritual guidance. They journeyed to holy places where saints were buried or where sacred objects/relics were kept. The vessels that contained the relics are called reliquary, and more often than not, they were kept in monasteries. 

A famous bit of literature dedicated to the concept of the pilgrimage was The Canterbury Tales.

As pilgrimages increased, the places were reliquary were kept needed to be open and available to large numbers of people and the space for church goers to partake in the sacred rite. This kind of building needed to be separate from the monasteries so as not to interfere with that lifestyle. From this we get the church building before it became a cathedral. 

Poe & Pop Culture, Week One

Eight weeks to teach a course on Poe and Pop Culture... it's been a brilliant idea from the beginning and yet less cohesive the more time I spent with it. Primarily a literature class, I expected a bit of reading and multi-media interaction... until the multi-media part crashed and burned in the worst way on this first day of class. Awkwardness is not my thing. This was acute awkwardness. Hmmm, how to fill the time, and then get the links to my students. Oh, hey! A blog. Boom. Nice, tidy links to go with the lecture portion of the class, because who wants all lecture and no play?

I set out to read this in preparing for the class:

And while this was way more than I will ever need, it gave me a bit more insight into his legacy. 

This class is a bit of a survey class, and to sum up his life, it was one misery after the next manifested itself in his poetic dirges. The most basic summary of his life I gleaned from this (hey, I have young children):

                                       

Poe was born in Boston January 19, 1809, to parents who were stage actors parents, his mother more accomplished and popular than his father, who, after too many negative reviews on his performances turned to heavy drinking and he eventually left the family. Then the misery set in. Basically, every woman he ever loved in any sense died: his mother, his foster mother, and his wife all died of Tuberculosis or as that era called it "consumption". One of his brothers also died from TB. Another mother figure in his younger years died of a brain tumor. 

While Poe never made much of a living off his writing, he was as an editor and critic of other writers, garnering the nickname "Tomahawk Man" for his scathing reviews. He made few friends among the literary crowd, but readers of his reviews loved him. Among his works, Poe wrote essays on how to write. Specifically, he wrote an essay (The Philosophy of Composition on how he wrote The Raven in which he states his philosophy is: Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem... Melancholy is thus the most legitimate of all poetical tomes... the death then, of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world-- and equally it is beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover.

That sums up Poe right there. Class dismissed. Except for the patterns found later on stemming from his influence. Walt Disney anyone? It's a much better story the mother figure is removed from the story line.

His personal life stayed in disarray and shambles until his end when he was found outside a tavern and completely mad in the head. He was taken to a nearby hospital, but never recovered, dying on  October 7, 1849. Problem was that he left his legacy in the hands of Rufus Griswold, someone who was not happy with the reviews he had received from Poe. It's not really known what kind of man Poe really was. Griswold succeeded in his postmortem smear campaign against Poe, making him out to be the vilest of men, lascivious, drunken, drugged, and as psychotic as the characters Poe wrote about. Poe's American popularity waned quickly, but European interest seems to have been steadfast, especially the French and English readership. It took nearly a hundred years and several biographers before Poe was once again back in the graces of American literary genius.

Classified as a writer in the literary era of Romanticism, Poe maintained a vastly different way of writing than most of his contemporaries. His writings are generally categorized in the sub genre of Gothic fiction, combining romance, horror, the supernatural with the intent to freak the reader out. Elements of Gothic fiction are 1) the virginal maiden, 2) older, foolish woman, 3) hero, 4) tyrant/villain, 5) bandits/ruffians, and 6) clergy. I envision the animated Disney film "Robin Hood" as the archetypal Gothic story. Hollywood made bank in its early days with tales like this starring Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power. 

Gothic fiction predates Poe by a couple of decades, but he certainly holds a place in their ranks. The most famous works of Gothic fiction being Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (published 1818), A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens, 1843), Dracula (Bram Stoker, 1897), Les Miserables (Victor Hugo, 1862), The Mysteries of Udolfo (Ann Radcliff, 1794), Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte, 1847), and Northanger Abbey (Jane Austen, 1890). Typically, the male writers wrote from the perspective of "sensibility" also referred to as the "cult of sensibility," which features female characters who were prone to weeping, fainting, needing the use of smelling salts, having reactionary fits of pique, women as genteel characters that need excessive pandering, etc. Female writers, on the other hand, (like Bronte and Austen) used these sensibilities to give female characters power as they used the sensibilities as a staged weakness. Mrs. Bennet from Pride and Prejudice is a fabulous example of the fainting woman character ( and Austen is brilliant in her jibe against those who write female characters as damsels in distress by making Mrs. Bennet ridiculous).

Poe, in many ways, is the literary gift that keeps on giving. Arthur Conan Doyle (author of Sherlock Holmes which was inspired by Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue) stated at an event celebrating the 100th year after Poe's death: These tales have been so pregnant with suggestion, so stimulating to the minds of others, that it may be said of many of them that each is a root from which a whole literature has developed. 

The next seven weeks of classes are focusing on his short stories, and not much will be covered in regards to his poetry. We briefly mentioned The Raven, Annabel Lee, and The Bells. Here are some links that give a modern take on these poems, some are readings and others animated clips.

The Raven

• The Simpson's, James Earl Jones narrates
• Animated with the words
• Christopher Lee narrates
• Christopher Walken narrates

Annabel Lee

• Stevie Nicks sings
• Basil Rathbone narrates
• Joan Baez sings

The Bells

• Animated narration
• Basil Rathbone narrates
• Phil Ochs sings
• Some white dude raps

Each class has bits of multimedia, emphasis will be on Vincent Price, Basil Rathbone, and Christopher Lee.

Bonus Material:

• Christopher Lee goes Metal
• Christopher Lee sings
• Become a Sir and do whatever you want-- like this.....

The Beginning: December 7, 1941

"Yesterday, on December 7th, 1941- a date which will live in infamy- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan..." and with those words Franklin D. Roosevelt began his speech to the American people. It was short, to the point, no flowery words; a listing of the deeds perpetrated at Oahu, other locations in Hawaii, and islands throughout the Pacific. This speech is remembered for those first few words, and every year, for over seven decades, this one line has become synonymous with the date. However, it is the end of the speech that has always grabbed my attention most. "Always will we remember the character of the onslaught against us.

No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.

I believe I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again.

Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger.

With confidence in our armed forces - with the unbounding determination of our people - we will gain the inevitable triumph - so help us God.

I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, Dec. 7, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire." This moment was so much more than a remembrance of an invasion and the destruction, it was the beginning.

I often consider the vast discrepancies in maturity and the drive toward goals this "Greatest Generation" has with the following generations. My Grandad was a young teenager at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was a couple more years before he could sign up with the Navy, his parents going with him to co-sign because he was still at minor. He was stationed in the Pacific, specifically Hawaii. At seventeen, he was convicted of his need to be part of the war.
   

                  

I don't know much about what he did or where he went. Like most of this generation, he was quiet on this subject and I never felt comfortable asking questions. There are two photos of this time, one with him and buddy (he's on the left in the photo below) and another with a Hawaiian girl in a grass skirt and a bikini top (which the memory is hazy and seems a bit mythical because no one talked about that one, especially Grandma... and that photo has suspiciously disappeared to time). There is a beauty in the naivete in wanting to be part of something, to be patriotic, to go to war, to be brave, and then there is the devastating reality. Few stories were shared with his family. There's the one where he lost a month's pay for trying his hand at Black Jack and losing spectacularly, so much that he refused to even touch a deck of cards for the rest of his life, and there's the one told many times, with resounding clarity, of the time he found he was allergic to pineapple and experienced a nasty case of hives. He was told that if it happened again, he would be sent home. The allure of bravery having faded in the face of what was real, he went to a pineapple field and waded in it, hoping for the hives. I never could picture my incredibly skinny, six foot, two inch Grandad rolling around in pineapples-- and how do you 'wade' in pineapples?--, but I always felt his desperation in the story when he told it. The story always ended with sigh, those pineapples didn't work a second time around. He never got the hives. He never got to go home.

Pearl Harbor was a starting point. It brought the United States into a multi-front war, with casualties totaling over one million American lives. So when this day rolls around every year, I see it as more than just the event of the Japanese invasion of Hawaii. I see it's impact and consequences weaving down through the generations, including mine.

Ordinary Folk

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair..." 
~Charles Dickens, 1849. 

Over the course of the last twenty years or so, in what I can assume would be the summation of my 'adult' life, there has been a pattern of growing complacency tempered severely with outrage in regards to the world at large; disunity, terrorism, fear, apathy... a jumbled juxtaposition of life, often oxymoronic in its particulars. It seems that many believe that we are living in extraordinary times, that we consider social contentions and striking out as some novel idea simply because we are living it now. There is considerable arrogance in assuming that what we face as a nation or as part of a global community is unique to us because it's happening NOW... that we are somehow more educated, more philosophical, more tolerant, more broad minded than any previous generation. I've pondered quite a bit recently on what others have said about the adversities they faced. And here you go:

William Wilberforce (1759-1833) spent twenty years campaigning against the British slave trade, the story of hundreds of years of putrid conditions and the foulest of sins

against human beings. 

"To live our lives and miss that great purpose we were designed to accomplish is truly a sin. It is inconceivable that we could be bored in a world with so much wrong to tackle, so much ignorance to reach and so much misery we could alleviate."

"I am disturbed when I see the majority of so-called Christians having such little understanding of the real nature of the faith they profess. Faith is a subject of such importance that we should not ignore it because of the distractions or the hectic pace of our lives."

"I mean not to accuse any one, but to take the shame upon myself, in common, indeed, with the whole parliament of Great Britain, for having suffered this horrid trade to be carried on under their authority. We are all guilty—we ought all to plead guilty, and not to exculpate ourselves by throwing the blame on others; and I therefore deprecate every kind of reflection against the various descriptions of people who are more immediately involved in this wretched business."

"Is it not the great end of religion, and, in particular, the glory of Christianity, to extinguish the malignant passions; to curb the violence, to control the appetites, and to smooth the asperities of man; to make us compassionate and kind, and forgiving one to another; to make us good husbands, good fathers, good friends; and to render us active and useful in the discharge of the relative social and civil duties?"

Elie Wiesel (1928-2016), Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor. The way this history is bandied about these days as a means to an end in arguing both for and against whatever a party stands for, I'll leave it to Mr. Wiesel.

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of beauty is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, but indifference between life and death."

"... if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices... We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere... When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must- at that moment- become the center of the universe."

"My greatest disappointment is that I believe that those of us who went through the war and tried to write about it, about their experience, became messengers. We have given the message, and nothing changed."

Simon Wiesenthal (1908-2005), Holocaust survivor.

"For me the Holocaust was not only a Jewish tragedy, but also a human tragedy. After the war, when I saw that the Jews were talking only about the tragedy of six million Jews, I sent letters to Jewish organizations asking them to talk also about the millions of others who were persecuted with us together - many of them only because they helped Jews."

"Hatred can be nurtured anywhere, idealism can be perverted into sadism anywhere. If hatred and sadism combine with modern technology the inferno could erupt anew anywhere."

"The history of man is the history of crimes, and history can repeat. So information is a defence. Through this we can build, we must build, a defence against repetition."

"There were millions of such families anxious only for peace and quiet in their own little nests. These were the mounting blocks by which the criminals climbed to power and kept it."

"For your benefit, learn from our tragedy. It is not a written law that the next victims must be Jews. It can also be other people."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1908-1945), theologian and anti-Nazi dissident who lost his life for his beliefs and outspokenness.

"Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act."

"Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness, and pride of power, and with its plea for the weak. Christians are doing too little to make these points clear... Christendom adjusts itself far too easily to the worship of power. Christians should give more offense, shock the world far more, than they are doing now."

"We must finally stop appealing to theology to justify our reserved silence about what the state is doing -- for that is nothing but fear. 'Open your mouth for the one who is voiceless' -- for who in the church today still remembers that that is the least of the Bible's demands in times such as these?"

"We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself."

Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965), former British Prime Minister.

"Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is always what it takes to sit down and listen."

"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968), minister and civil rights activist

"Nonviolence means avoiding not only the external and physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him."

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous that sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."

A couple more: Mr. Rogers and J.R.R Tolkien

              

American Thanksgiving

    It's nearly Thanksgiving Day and preparations are underway across the United States. Turkeys and pies are in demand, piled high in grocery stores. My own twenty pound bird is jammed in my fridge right now. Much has been made out of this day: the family gatherings, the gorging, the counting of endless blessings. In the midst of civil war, Abraham Lincoln made it an official federal day of thanksgiving, saying:

 "It has seemed to me fit and proper that they [innumerable blessings] should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people........And I recommend to them [that recognize and take part in this day] that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union."

    The Thanksgiving tradition, as we all remember from the first days of school, is a long one, reaching back to the Pilgrims at Plymouth. My favorite float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is the giant turkey that bobs his head and moves alongside the Pilgrims and their feast. It's such a warm, inviting scene; these people who left their homeland for far off shores, who struggled those first years, and then recognized their bounty of harvest and fell to their knees in prayer and thanksgiving to the Provider. What we tend to forget is why they left their homes in the first place, the widespread persecution they lived under as they sought the freedom to organize their lives and faith the way they saw fit and found in Scripture. The shore of Massachusetts was not their initial destination. They attempted to leave England for Holland but under great duress. "They were hunted and persecuted on every side, until their former afflictions were but fleabitings in comparison. Some were clapped into prison; others had their houses watched day and night, and escaped with difficulty; and most were obliged to fly, and leave their homes and means of livelihood," writes William Bradford in Of Plymouth Plantation. He continues, "For these reformers to be thus constrained to leave their native soil, their lands and livings, and all their friends, was a great sacrifice, and was wondered at by many. But to go into a country unknown to them, where they must learn a new language, and get their livings they knew not how, seemed an almost desperate adventure, and a misery worse than death........ But this was not all; for though it was made intolerable for them to stay, they were not allowed to go; the ports were shut against them, so that they had to seek secret means of conveyance, to bribe the captains of ships, and give extraordinary rates for their passages. Often they were betrayed, their goods intercepted, and thereby were put to great trouble and expense." Of Plymouth Plantation is worth the read as a reminder of where the Pilgrims came from and what they suffered in choosing to leave England and then Holland for passage to America.

    The United States has a long history of opening and closing its doors. From the beginning its reputation of being a free land, a haven for those who are desperate to leave their lands because of war, famine and freedom has offered hope to millions. I don't have an answer for the current Syrian refugee crisis. I'm not sure if we let them in; I'm not sure if we keep them out. I have seen both sides scream, spewing fear and hate and ignorance. I have not seen the mercy, the willingness to find a common ground. Lest you forget, we are a nation built on refugees, a glorious melting pot. Like any nation, we have expectations and historically have done well with the give and take of ideas and culture. Fear, however, is a funny thing. It keeps us from doing things that could be beneficial and it makes us do things that could be detrimental. No one, however, has ever suffered from too much mercy and grace. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness-- you know those things we are supposed to be known for? We've allowed them to be stomped under the feet of politics. Is Thanksgiving only for those who have known little suffering? Only for those that will stuff themselves into a tryptophanic stupor? Only for those with roofs over their heads and clothing on their backs? Only those who are third, fourth or fifth generation American? Only those that sought our shores from 1621 to 2001? The thought that being American is an exclusive condition is folly, negating our long history of refugees searching for security, basic needs and freedom. Whatever the Left or the Right is preaching right now, rise above it. There is a common ground. It lies neither on the one side nor the other, however they spin it. 

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows worldwide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!' cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

~ Emma Lazarus, 1883

Comparative History and Other Exciting Titles

    What an age we live in: the flow of information that is accessible to millions and millions of people; the ability to search for information and form opinions. Social media have given us the power of the share/post function. We have a great responsibility laid upon us in the simple mouse click/swipe action. A responsibility to provide information that is complete and whole, requiring thought and possibly action from the readers that is beyond a few clicks or swipes. What do we do with this power? From my many years of observation it goes down like this: we read or watch something, feel empowered by the message and immediately repost with our two cents worth on why we agree with the post in the first place. More often than not, we repost things because we are outraged. Outraged at society. Outraged with government. Outraged with culture. Outraged with history. We read something that strikes a chord deep within our core values and we let the outrage carry us to share it with our friends. We assume our friends will agree and if they don't, we fall into a cesspool of indignation and provide them with all the reasons they need to change their values to fit the narrative of the post. The observation is that outrage begets more outrage and the mad typing of CAPITAL LETTERS and exclamation points. Calm yourselves. The keyboard can't handle the change you are trying to elicit. If the design of a post is to evoke righteous indignation, chances are more than good that there is information within the post that has been distorted, and it should be questioned immediately. My attitude towards these types of posts is blasé, but then there will be a barrage of posts in my newsfeed that ominously tell the reader to "Do your research!" or "Know your history!” Those I read. Those I always question.

     History is the study of the evolution of society, from the beginnings of a civilization, to its technological advancement, and its centralization and unification. It is the study of change; the pattern of betterment across the ages, where one generation strives to leave a better world to the next and so on. Historical methodology and comparative history are taught mostly in higher level history courses. Historical Methods is the first class a student majoring in history takes in college, right alongside all those basic classes. It teaches the student how to research empirically, how to analyze and use the evidences found from the research. The history degree is capped by a Senior Seminar in Comparative History, the culmination of how the student has learned to study history. To the history major, it’s the most beautiful thing. Many students, throughout their formal education, learn history as a series of events and dates that are central to one civilization. Each history class focuses on one group of people: American, English, ancient, classical, etc. The comparison of these civilizations through critical analysis is often left behind in favor of the memorization of facts. Ask anyone which subject they disliked most in school and it generally falls to history. It's 'boring' is the first answer, ‘tedious’ a close second. If the model for historical education is to know the facts to keep us from repeating history then more analytical and comparative history should be taught. If historical methodology and comparative history were utilized during our foundational years of education, the notion of "know your history" would be far more pertinent.

    Interest in history seemingly happens later in life, well past the stacks of thick books and time lines. As we age and become more aware of the events around us, we learn the value of history as a means of guidance. We know the answers lie in the past. We read a bit, are told quite a bit through media and other informational outlets and we take the histories we remember from formal education, plucking facts from all different histories, and we slap them together, hoping they give us the answers we seek. Robert Bain, in his piece entitled Building an Essential World History Tool: Teaching Comparative History for the book Teaching World History (the study of history also throws long and wordy titles out there to scare people off) writes of 'implicit' comparisons. Bain says "...implicit comparisons are often poor comparisons. Using little or no methodology, people allow surface similarity or difference to pass for analysis or evidence. Teachers often assume students can compare because everyone makes comparisons so often. Yet frequency of activity does not guarantee the quality.” Bain's writing is spot on and the article in its entirety is worth the time as it goes into detail on how the method should function (see link above).

     Information is only worth what we do with it. The interwebs have done their best to distort and misuse history for the purpose of propaganda. The word ‘propaganda’ elicits visions of posters from the World War I and II era, the "Buy War Bonds!" or "Loose lips sink ships!" or the plethora of print media put out that was anti-Allies, anti-Axis, anti-Communist, anti-Socialist, anti-Semitic, and anti-fill-in-the-blank. The basic definition of propaganda is ‘information that is designed to mislead or persuade’ (dictionary.com).  The bombardment of propaganda via social media is mind numbing and more often than not a fabrication of some vague history or ideology. Propaganda use words like "that person is socialist or fascist or both" and "our morally defunct society is doomed to collapse like Rome" or "our current President is the next Hitler, ready to take us into the next Reich." The reality is just nope. Bains quotes David Hacket Fisher (Historians’ Fallacies) about the “misuse of comparison as the fallacy of the appositive proof, a ‘complex form of empirical error, which consists in an attempt to establish the existence of a quality in A by contract with quality in B—and B is misrepresented or misunderstood.’ This misuse is an “invidious mistake.”  Though the real intention is on event A, Fisher explains, the ‘erroneous B is bootlegged’ into the discussion of evidence.” The purpose of history is to be aware, to see patterns, to be wary. History is readily abused when it does not fit the fixed narrative. Comparative history begs you to know more about the pattern, more about how things happened and why. A much deeper understanding of how Fascism and Socialism swept Europe and how Communism gripped Russia is needed before you can make the comparison with America. Comparatively, we have little in common with the patterns and histories of either. There are many surface similarities, but the deeper histories would calm people down enough to reject every idea that takes one or two similarities and rushes us to our doom. “One of the dangers of a generic comparative method is that it presupposes we know from the outset what the effective categories of comparison are. One of the strengths of the comparative method in history is that it questions that assumption. Historians recognize that comparative categories are both time and culture bound. Therefore, they understand that new insights, questions, and categories arise after initial comparison,” Bains writes. The comparative method requires you to bring all the information you can to the table, to trace the road a civilization took, decide how they compare with another civilization, and then realize, even after the conclusion, that there will always be things that make it similar (so tuck that into the wary corner of your mind) but then not (so tuck that into a corner that’s interested but not freaked out). And just know that at some point you will have to re-evaluate your findings if later on you find something that turns the pattern on its side. History is incredibly fluid; its broader conclusions make the pattern, it’s the individual details that can change. It seems like a form of madness, right?  It’s always changing, yet everyone wants to stick it to a rigid course to fit the current events. It’s not that simple.

    Each kernel of information about a society can rock the comparison of one society to another. The rise of Hitler was due in large part to his and other German experiences during World War I and the years following. The German experience through the years of 1912 (give or take, one of those ghastly frustrations in deciding how far back to go) to 1933 is quite unique to that society. The American experience of the same time period was vastly different. I would argue that the Treaty of Versailles caused a great deal more suffering to the German people in a post-war world than the suffering Americans faced once back on American soil later on in the early 1930s. This difference made a huge impact on German societal and governmental stability and/or instability, something the United States had no experience with in the early 20^th century, at least not on the level of an all-encompassing, revolutionary stab at a new kind of governmental rule. But that’s a post for another day.

        I hope with this blog to take some social media posts to task but to also shed light on the 'isms' that are bandied about and the deeper history that many feel is the pattern for current America. I love the study of comparative history, I love history books and prefer documentaries to most television (unless it’s Doctor Who, but you know, time travel, and “people assume that time is a strict progression from cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint—it’s more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly time-y wimey… stuff”). It seems fitting that I share my collection of thoughts on history. I have boxes full of research, notes and essays that could use an airing. What else can I do? I was a history major. It's like being an English major....... dun, dun, dun….

Atypical Historical Interests

    As per my usual, the majority of my reading consists of German history. For most European countries, Germany, as a unified state, is fairly young (their unification was accomplished in 1871 by the Prussian, Otto von Bismarck.), but their history is quite extraordinary (and does not always elicit positive memories). I came into this interest, at about the age of fourteen when I was studying about World War Two. There were two things about this period that stood out for me: 1) The internment of Japanese-Americans by the United States and 2) the Holocaust.  The second event (I hate using that word, but can't feel any better about it by the thesaurus suggestions of 'appearance or happening,' which shows the complexity of the subject.) drew me in quickly and my focus on the US internment camps waned.
    World War Two and the Third Reich are synonymous with the Holocaust when thinking of the European front. Most history covering this time period, dwell on the Jewish Holocaust and what "Germans" did under the Third Reich. I'm not one to just take history for granted and only take one portion of a history as a glossed over version of a national history. It is a very good thing (and the right thing) to forever remember what happened under Adolf Hitler, especially where the Jews are concerned. I'm a huge advocate for the works of Yad Vashem and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Their organizations have been very effective in keeping the history current, arming future generations with the knowledge of the events that allowed Hitler to come to power and the repercussions of his twelve year reign.
    That being said, as a sort of disclaimer, in all my studies, I have chosen to look beyond the obvious history surround the Third Reich, the endless biographies of Hitler and the well-researched history of the Holocaust itself that covers the Shoah (the specific Holocaust of the Jews, excluding the Roma, POWs, those with disablities, anti-Nazi activists, homosexuals, and Jehovah's Witnesses). The Jews were Hitler's priority and his hate was highly effective in permanently removing them from the 'Aryan State.' The Roma (or Romani; gypsies) have interested me a great deal. They are still considered an 'outsider' race in much of Europe.
    More recently, my interests have turned to the Germans who lived during the times preceding the Third Reich and what various roles were taken during that time period as well. It can be a difficult undertaking at best. I have found very little in the way of research of German daily life. The image of Hitler is so overreaching, there seems to be little available in trying to understand or see how a German family lived. And that was, by far, more than Hitler ever dreamed his regime could accomplish; to not see individual life outside the precepts of Nazism. By the end of the war, knowledge of the atrocities that had been committed became known to the public (yes, even to the German public; there is a reason the extermination camps were not in Germany, but in Poland. The camps within Germany were concentration camps, being geared for political prisoners, POWs, and as stops along the way to the extermination camps like the Auschwitz compound, Belzec and Chelmno. The camps within Germany eventually saw many of the same atrocities as the death camps, but that was not their primary purpose.).
    One thing I've found in scholarly research is that those who lived in Germany during this time period do not wish to remember that time (if you study this time period, the term 'collective guilt' crops up quite a bit). If it is discussed, it is in a cryptic, detached manner. Not all Germans were Nazis, not all Germans were guilty of committing the crimes, but many feel the guilt of association; the guilt of passive allegiance to the man that claimed to pull Germany back together as a nation after the devastation of the first world war and the Treaty of Versailles.
    I find that I can get 'wordy' as I think about this time period. This post was not even supposed to be about this. It was to be a post on a fantastic book I just completed this morning. I guess I have another post in the future about this book, which is good. I probably need to think about it a little more before I get 'wordy.' I guess my blog title is appropriate in this case. I'm rambling.