by amandastiver

Reminiscing

I’ve written about using documentaries, historical journals, museums, and re-enactments to explore history, but I can’t go on without praising one of my favorite publications. It is a magazine that brings primary source history to my fingertips and reminds me of the struggles and challenges my parents and grandparents faced.

Don’t jump to conclusions! I’m not talking about WWII history magazines, archeological reviews, etc. I like those too, but they’re for another day.

I’m talking about entry-level history where even the most disinterested beginner can take a bit out of time and enjoy it.  A visual layout with great, short, first person reports on the historical past of the 20th century is the fundamental strength of Reminisce magazine published by Reiman Media Group which is a subsidiary of The Reader’s Digest Association, INC.

Tales of the past

This is the kind of history that you might hear your grandparents or great-grandparents tell if you are lucky enough to have these resources still alive. It isn’t ground breaking, never-before-seen historical research, but it is just as important. Knowing the daily details of the past and the experiences of our elders help us to live a fuller life, to respect them more, emulate the great things they did, and, one hopes, not make the same mistakes.

Magazines like this are a great teaching tool for kids and teens and a way to get them interested in history. Reminisce in particular has a surfeit of photographs, illustrations, and reprints of old cartoons and advertisements. Every issue is colorful, like having your own personal museum to page through whenever you need to fill a few minutes.

Did people really act like that?

After flipping through the past, it might surprise you to realize how degraded our current society has become. Wholesomeness is not something marketers feature much anymore. We are so used to the world in which we live that sometimes it takes a virtual journey back in time to realize how sordid it has become.

Scanning the advertisements of years past is an education in what people valued. The advertising professionals of the era designed their material to appeal to those values: wholesomeness, dignity, respect, faith, hard work, thrift, good clean fun, cleanliness, good cheer, family, marriage, the innocence of romance. From our 21st century cynical viewpoint we often see this material and think it looks hokey or syrupy. Kind of sad that good clean fun isn’t considered fun anymore.

There is one requirement when delving into this kind of historical record (or any part of the past, actually): check your modern sensibilities and put them aside, don’t reason from our contemporary perspective. Trade cynicism for a lighter approach to life in order to appreciate an era, only a few decades old, which had a greater sweetness and innocence than what we suffer through today.

by amandastiver

Read Me A Little History…

Read aloud. Or better yet, listen to someone else read aloud. Really, try it!

Sound a little too dramatic? Seems kind of weird, maybe, because we don’t do that kind of think anymore. Or do we?

Have you ever watched a news anchor talk at you? They aren’t gabbing from memory – they’re reading aloud! Yep, from that teleprompter screen right next to the camera!

Guess who else reads aloud? Right – politicians. Teleprompters being the modern default, but some still use good old note cards.

Whatever the case, they are all reading aloud. We do a lot of reading these days, the Internet has made that a necessity, and so we don’t often take the time to read out loud from a book. However, back before moving pictures, radio, television, and Internet folks regularly read to each other.

Tell me a story, read me a book

On a cold winter evening around the fireplace of a rough log cabin, by the light of homemade candles, settlers would read out loud from the Bible, maybe Plutarch’s Lives (thank you Seven Brides for Seven Brothers), or perhaps a collection of Shakespeare. They didn’t have many books, but what they had, they read.

It was entertainment and education. Poetry was read aloud (sometimes from memory) as were plays, works of fiction, works of history, and religious works. It was a shared experience.

If you read aloud often enough, you begin to understand written works in a different way. Try reading the Bible silently – zoom through a few verses in the historical books of Chronicles or Kings – kind of dull, you say?

Okay, change tack, read aloud as if you are narrating a Cecil B. DeMille production of epic biblical proportions! Make sure that your audience, real or imagined, can understand each word and that the transitions from action to description are clear. Suddenly it isn’t so dull! Try the same thing with Jane Austen – you’ll be amazed at how her works come to life!

Reading aloud is an art form and a connection to the historic past. Back in the days of limited literacy those who could read aloud did so that others would have a chance to hear whatever it was they were reading. It was the default mode of literacy for many centuries until fairly recently.

Try it and you’ll find that a simple activity like this is a fun trip to the historical past.

by amandastiver

When is history fact – wait, let me revise that…

Human interest in its own history has been around for, well, since humanity began. Through different means – oral, written, re-enacted – has history been passed down between generations. It was important to live up to the expectations and deeds of the elders.

Herodotus is given credit for being the father of history, but if we look further back we will find that various cultures had already been recording their history in writing. The Israelites spring to mind with the earliest historical works in the Bible: the five books of Moses.

Were all of these accounts (Greek, Roman, Babylonian, Israelite, etc.) factual? Some yes, some no. Do humans revise their history? Certainly. So are there really facts in history? Yes – the key is how to find and organize them to accurately understand an historic event.

You printed what?

Think of a reporter in an old black and white film, being chewed out by the editor of the paper for not getting the facts. The editor goes on to remind the wayward employee that he needs to get back to the basics – who, when, where, what and then, maybe, how and why!

Reporting or researching history works along the same lines. Who was involved in the event in question? When did it occur? Where? What kind of event was it? These can usually be verified by physical evidence – inscriptions, written records, archeological ruins, etc.

When the concrete details are corralled, then the suppositions may begin. How was it done? And, most iffy of all – why it happened?

It’s like working through one of those logic puzzles, with a series of clues and a criss-cross chart. Verify the easy items first. Then come the mental gymnastics.

See, what I really meant was…

Revise means to correct or improve – not a bad idea if past research was flawed or a supposition was off base because of societal taboos or bias. It has another meaning, slightly less virtuous sounding – to amend (not so bad) or alter (hmm, bad).

Alteration to rectify a mistaken fact is what history is about, but altering an historic record to change the interpretation based on current societal bias, personal opinion or grudge isn’t history – it’s misleading and dishonest. Ironically, the record of human history is full of this kind of revision.

To see through revision, learn about the authors; find out their philosophy of history. Then if you subtract the bias of their philosophy, does their interpretation still hold up? Be your own historian, be it academic history or any story or human event because, tomorrow, it will all be history!

by amandastiver

The Great Museum Debate

Narrowing the itinerary, I had decided on four museums. The Bramah Tea and Coffee Museum, the Imperial War Museum, The Churchill War Rooms, and lastly, the grand poobah – The British Museum.

Sadly, on that trip to the UK I had no time for the first three-fourths of the list, but I made it to the British Museum. The edifice is impressive – a wide yard with steps that lead up to a long portico of sturdy, grey columns.

Fetch your hiking boots…

When I think museum, I think a small, well organized place with five or six rooms you can see in a fairly short time. This is not the right impression for the British M. The £2 map you can buy to keep you on track is a maze of room upon room of antiquities.

With only a few hours to see a tiny sampling of what it has to offer, I strolled through the main exhibit hall of Egyptian artifacts (the Rosetta Stone among them) into the Parthenon sculptures and back down the Assyrian hall. I looked in vain for a Scythian exhibit, only to find out it was closed for repair, so I took a short turn in the temporary display of 18th century exploration. I entirely missed the ancient British artifacts, Asian, and African exhibits, among all the rest.

It’s hard to take in the scale of so many ‘things’ housed in the museum complex, but it helps to imagine a very classy warehouse where you can see into most of the boxes. To learn more about the museum, the web address is http://www.britishmuseum.org.

I recommend going because it’s the abode of bits and fascinating pieces of ancient civilizations, but also because the building itself is an historic landmark. Frankly, most of London is an historic landmark.

Museums draw you to the past. Coming face to face with an ancient Egyptian carving brings reality to your sense of history – something that looking at a picture in a book cannot do. You may be surprised at how your assumptions are burst by seeing how much smaller or larger a famous artifact is from the way you imagined it would be.

Who owns what?

On a related note, there is a continuous debate about the ethics of major European museums keeping ownership of items discovered in other countries (mostly former colonies or protectorates). British, German, and French museums, among others, house some of the seminal pieces representing Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

Many nations want their items returned, and fairly enough, as they exemplify the cultural history of those places. On the other hand, with the instability, politically and religiously of many nations of origin, some argue that human history is best protected by keeping the items where they have been for the past century or more.

Arguing in favor of this sentiment was the 2001 destruction in Afghanistan of two giant statues of Buddha by Islamic extremists. Likewise the ensuing chaos and devastation of Iraq at war has resulted in the pilfering and destruction of many Assyrian and Babylonian artifacts from Iraqi museums.

Consensus eludes the world on this issue at present, but compromises have been suggested. Returning the originals to their homes, but not before precise copies can be made to remain in place at western museums. Not unlike the copy of the Lascaux caves in France that was made to protect the original from too many respirating tourists.

by amandastiver

Skimming is not just for milk…

So far I’ve learned that Athens had a Navy, a rather glorious one, and that in order to work this miracle the Athenians had to turn themselves into a democratic state. This all took place from about 483 to 322 B.C. on the Peloponnesus (information courtesy of the back cover blurb and index of Lords of the Sea: The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy and the Birth of Democracy by John R. Hale).

On a trip to Costco today I spotted this volume by Hale and it now has the honor of residing on my reading pile. It was a tough decision, but the Athenian Navy won out over other front-runners like Teddy Roosevelt as Conservationist, the Mayflower, and a history of the Battle of Trafalgar. I am already endowed with or have access to books covering the Napoleonic naval wars, the landing of the Mayflower, and several biographies of Theodore R.

I would like to give a full-scale critique of my purchase, but I haven’t read it. However, I have employed my trusty skimming skills, my old allies since discovering a book on speed-reading in high school. I figured that was the only way I could make it through my U.S. Advanced Placement History textbook and ace the test (I did and I did).

Read a little, learn a lot

I love the subtlety of skimming (it’s  sort of like literary espionage). With  one glance at the cover I know title  and author. The back cover or inside  jacket flaps give me a summary of  what the book is about as well as  reviews. A word on reviews, they are  either insightful or worthless –  depends on the author, so don’t  always take their word for it.

Next I march on to the index, which tells me how the author organized his research and thoughts on the subject. I flip through the book and see what visuals it has to offer. Visuals aren’t important for everyone, but if I am going to take the time to read the whole text on Greek history and Athenian democracy I would like to hope that a handy reference map has been provided.

Finally, I get to the words, the prose. I read a few paragraphs of the introduction in search of a thesis or specific purpose statement as well as perceived bias. Then I trudge through, sampling a paragraph here and there for style and content. If the writing is really tedious, and I don’t have to know the subject matter – I don’t want to read it. Lastly, I read the final few paragraphs in order to know if I want to spend those precious hours working word by word through the entire book.

All this takes about 3-5 minutes and by then I have made my decision to purchase. Not only that, I have now a framework for all the material I will glean from reading the book. This is a valuable memory and comprehension tool.

Try this technique on your next read and see how it works for you!

by amandastiver

The Internet: Research Tool

In my college days the Internet as a research tool had the reputation of a con artist heading up a charity. Academia didn’t like the idea of all that unsubstantiated “chatter” out there.

Well, times are changing and a little over a decade has given the Internet a sheen of respectability. It’s still a jungle of information but not a dead loss.

The Internet is a useful tour guide. With regard to history, Wikipedia and the like are a good starting point if you want basic information and are prepared to swim through a river of bias to get it. Encyclopedic sites that are reader-written have obvious problems – anybody can say anything!

Start there and move on to verifiable sources: books, official journals, news items (although, depending on source and with the political bias of many news sources, take them with a grain of salt), and official websites. Some of these are available on the Internet. And then there are story verifying watchdog sites (like Snopes) that come in handy.

Find the Facts

“Verify, verify, verify” is the catch phrase of Internet research. So much information, often self-published, is circulating that you have to consider it questionable until you have two or three sources to back it up.

If I’m trying to recall an historical event and it’s just barely escaping me, search engines can take the details I do remember and lead me back to the source. That is the beauty of the being online.

I’d like to say a word for online bookstores, like Amazon, and their review pages. Thrown in with the occasional crank are useful bits of information that may lead to another book or source of study.

Research on the Internet is still much like putting together a jigsaw puzzle with part of the information here, another fact there, mixed in with a lot of repetition, or on the downside, a bunch of lies.

Tread the river of information carefully, and be grateful we have the freedom to produce it!

by amandastiver

Learning from the Past: School Books

“Here, Kitty; see what I have. Oh yes; she sees me now. I have an apple for you, Kit. One for you, and one for me. Kitty is my horse. She will eat grass and apples.”

So goes a reading lesson from page 15 of Classics for Children: A First Reader by J.H. Stickney published by Ginn & Company, Boston, USA, 1893.

I doubt you would find similar subject matter in an early grade English book today. I also doubt many kids know much about horses anymore. Back then, nearly everybody had a horse for transportation and farm work.

I find it interesting that the assumed common knowledge of 1893 differs so much from what we find common today. Digital technology has replaced mechanical technology in most realms of our life, at least on the surface.

If you scratch down deep enough you’ll find that we still rely on mechanical technology the bulk of the time. Until someone invents the replicator of Star Trek fame, we’re going to be planting seeds in the ground and harvesting them for a long time to come. Mechanical muscle gets the heavy work done.

I before E-mail

Flipping through an antique English primer is a fascinating journey into the past. The rest of Stickney’s reader is filled with references to farm animals, the agricultural world, the natural world, physical chores, and old-fashioned games like rolling a hoop.

I can still remember this world from family stories because my maternal grandparents lived it until they died and my parents grew up in it, but I wonder whether youngsters in their twenties and under will understand these basic things if the digital world continues to grow on its current scope and scale.

An old adage of history, and life, is that you have to walk before you run. You need a solid grounding in the fundamentals before you can move on to the complexities.

Learn a little bit about the agricultural world that preceded and still sustains our digital world.

It’s important.

by amandastiver

UK Election, Hung Parliaments, and History

Watching the electoral machinations of another country carries the detached, but comforting sentiment that, “ah well, they do have their problems, don’t they!”

It makes us feel better about things back home – almost. Knowing that leadership around the world seems to be faltering on a variety of levels isn’t really comforting, but it is a distraction.

This most recent election in Great Britain has been interesting to me, for its import on a national level in the UK, but also because of the situation it created, a hung parliament.

Three-for-all

Being an American, I’m still trying to wrap my head around the British Parliament and it’s associated traditions and functions. A multi-party system has its share of challenges and this most recent election proves the point.

Three parties took the lion’s share of the general election: the Labour party (of seated Prime Minster Gordon Brown), the Conservative party, and the Liberal- Democrat party. By vote the Conservatives won the most, but in order to create a cabinet and functioning government, a more significant surplus of votes was required for an outright Conservative win. Labour came in second, and the Liberal-Democrats third, with a much smaller percentage.

This is where it gets tricky because, suddenly, the power play is in the hands of the third party – though small, it is the deal breaker. A coalition must be formed by the first two in line or no one has the momentum to rule. Thus, the third party becomes the bride and the first two her ardent suitors.

In this case the leader of the Liberal-Democrats, Nick Clegg, decided on a coalition government under the Conservatives (ironic, as these two parties tend not to be ideologically closely related) and their leader, David Cameron. Using the analogy of American politics, this is like a Republican president peopling his cabinet, attorneys general, and other administration posts with Democrats as well as members of his own party and adding into the goals of his administration, those of his opponents. Thus, you see the complications.

Once the hashing out has been done, Queen Elizabeth invites the prime ministerial candidate with the best odds of creating a coalition government to her presence and asks him to form a government (or as we would style it, an administration). This makes it official. It is the pomp part of the equation that is at once quaint and foreign to those of us from the States.

As a result the new Prime Minister is David Cameron.

Where’s the history?

That’s just it; this is history. The last hung parliament was in the middle 1970’s, it doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it makes for a lot of drama.

“Present-vision,” which is the inability to recognize an historical moment while one is in it, affects us all. We don’t realize until someone tells us later that, yes, your freedoms were being rapidly erased by a government with starkly different views on social structures. Or that, yep, that war in the 1940’s was a big deal!

Worse than present-vision is historical illiteracy. When people can’t look at the past, get the facts, and believe what happened happened, then they, by default, ask for a repeat performance. A few charmers from my college days, “That Soviet Union thing, well, it didn’t work out so well, especially if you disagreed with anybody in power,” and “No, the United States did not know they were going to win the Second World War when they entered the fray, that’s why they had to fight a war!”

Live in the present, but learn from the past, and look to the future!

by amandastiver

Do you remember when…?

The details of the past are accessible by a single question. Being an historian only takes that one question and someone with a story to tell.

There are so many assumptions about history – primarily that it is inaccessible and boring. It really isn’t. It just takes someone young asking an elder what they know about the past.

History passed down in this way is referred to as an oral record. Often, people who yearn to research their personal genealogy become the default guardians of this historical record in their family. They were the ones who cared enough to find out about the family history before the bearers of that record were no more.

Sometimes we assume that once we’re tagged as the “family historian” we’re expected to write a book, which is a great achievement, but simply being able and willing to one day share those same stories with a younger generation is a great achievement, too.

Be the link – learn the history – pass it on.

by amandastiver

Time Machines…

At a garage sale I picked up a book entitled, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella Bird, who, according to the cover blurb was “a Victorian Englishwoman” – an intrepid lady traveler of the late nineteenth century.

These journalized or epistolary (letter based) accounts of the past, primary sources, are a fun way to study history. Their first-person perspective is always a refreshing change from most analytical histories on the bookstore shelf. Such perspectives, untainted by revision or assumptions are the actual thoughts of those who lived the past, warts and all.

Good intentions

I like this genre so much that I have two other books of this type in my reading pile. Mollie: The Journal of Mollie Dorsey Sanford by the aforementioned Mollie Dorsey Sanford and Daughter of the Regiment: Memoirs of a Childhood in the Frontier Army, 1878-1898 by Mary Leefe Laurence. Neither of which I have finished. For, unlike fiction, journals have their boring days, even historical journals, which tempts me to put them down and reach for something more exciting.

This is a conundrum of historiography (the study of the study of history) – the boring stuff. What do we do with it? Read, skip it, or write about it in painful detail? There are authors who do that!

Acknowledge it. If our lives were daily filled with fast-paced action, danger, and intrigue, we’d be neurotic! The boring stuff lets us live a saner life.

Life is in the details

Maybe boring is too much of a condemnation; call it instead daily life, the details of living. Stopping for a pretty sunset, relaxing in an empty hour with a good book, washing the clothes, fixing a meal, etc. These things go on, even when the danger of wars, upheaval and panic have passed.

I suspect my curiosity will get the best of me and I’ll drift back to Mollie, Mary or Isabella and finish their works. The rich detail of the eras in which they lived adding to a greater knowledge of life in the past.

If you’re stuck for an interesting history read, try an historical journal – your very own guided trip back in time.