Barb’s Burblings

I was in a training session for volunteering at Ford’s (they’re opening a new Center for Education and Leadership, which is very exciting and you should go see it when it opens) and we were discussing working with various age groups. The leader was saying how much she enjoys working with elementary school students, and another person in the training talked about how it was in 4th or 5th grade that he really started getting into history. And I thought about it and yeah, 4th grade was when history happened for me.

We moved to Connecticut the summer before 4th grade, and I remember getting a lot of books out of the library. One of them was a biography of Eleanor Roosevelt. (Of course, the mere fact that I was browsing for books to read for pleasure in the children’s biography section says something.) I read it and…that was it. I was hooked. Read other biographies of her. Read biographies of FDR. Begged my parents to take me to Hyde Park. I’m not sure why this didn’t extend to reading about Teddy Roosevelt, but there you go. I still devour books about Eleanor and Franklin.

And we started learning about Connecticut history. That didn’t intrigue me so much (well, maybe the story about shoving the state charter into a tree did a bit), but it was this time that I read The Witch of Blackbird Pond and Calico Captive. If there’s something that sparked my interest in history, particularly the Colonial period, it’s reading those books. I still love them. Part of me doesn’t want to go to Montreal, because I love it too much in my imagination from Miriam goes there.

Maybe it’s because that’s the age that kids start grasping the concept of different time periods. I don’t know. But that’s certainly when the history bug bit me.

My friend Steve tonight asked what his title was when we worked on our college newspaper. I couldn’t remember, but did remember that our school library has electronic copies of the paper, so I randomly chose an issue from January of 2000, my senior year. I flipped to the masthead and naturally my eye was drawn to the “Consider This,” which was our weekly editorial. That week there had been a snowstorm, to the point that classes were canceled. And this is what we wrote:

A helpful word of advice from the association of inebriated pedestrians: In hazardous conditions, the consumption of alcoholic beverages while walking anywhere on the College campus is not recommended. Out of the 500,000 snow shovels made by Wal-Mart annually, none of them, we repeat none of them, have ever made it to Gettysburg College. Also under that heading are snowblowers, icepicks, plows, and all other variations of snow removal equipment.

Drinking and debauchery aside, the cost of each class meeting for a Tuesday/Thursday session is approximately 95 dollars. The way that was, the staff, figure it, the College owes us a total of approximately 600 dollars. Checks can be made out to The Gettysburgian and mailed to campus box 434.

(The Gettysburgian, January 27, 2000, p. 9)

Dang, we swore! We were Hard Core. Also, completely insane by 2 a.m. And apparently desperate to pad the word count. But still, this, right here, is why I have such fond memories of the Burgian. It was awesome.

There’s an awesome 60 Minutes clip–12 minutes of footage of a cable car ride in San Francisco, taken mere days before the 1906 earthquake. At first I watched it, just appreciating the clothes (the hats!), the old cars weaving around, the horse-and-carts sharing the road with the cable cars and the cars. Such an interesting period, the turn of last century. I particularly enjoyed the bicycles passing the cable car.

But as I watched, I got more involved with the fact that the earthquake was going to happen. It particularly hit me late in the clip, as people started darting into the picture more, hamming it up a bit for the camera. And I couldn’t help but contrast that with the images of the post-earthquake city. And so sad. So, so sad.

How excited was I to see an article that explains the Nationals’ poor luck? So excited. Because it turns out that the Nats are cursed, and there’s nothing more fun than a baseball curse. And what could be more awesome than a curse related to the Lincoln assassination? Nothing. Nothing is more awesome than that.

Nationals Park sits directly on an infamous stretch of the Anacostia River where authorities conducted the autopsy of John Wilkes Booth on the ironclad U.S.S. Montauk anchored at the Navy Yard. Next door at Fort McNair, Booth’s co-conspirators were held and tried at the country’s first federal penitentiary, and four of them were hanged there in July 1865. Booth himself was buried there until his remains were later moved.

Nestled beside where Lincoln’s killers were executed, the placement of the stadium may have unwittingly exposed the Nationals to the conspirators’ vengeful ghosts. That the apparitions of Booth and his gang would aim their ghoulish enmity on modern baseball may seem strange, but it makes sense given President Lincoln’s affinity for what became our national pastime.

Nothing makes more sense than Lincoln’s assassins haunting a baseball team. I totally think that the Nats should capitalize on this somehow. Nationals Park needs something to give it character. This is the perfect opportunity! I’m thinking exorcism. I’m thinking a plaque, at least. I’m thinking anti-Booth chants. I thinking it will be fantastic.

It’s my tradition on the 4th of July to watch 1776. I first saw it in music class in 4th grade, and if the Elizabeth George Speare books hadn’t turned me into a devotee of that time period, that movie did it. (Plus, they said “ass”! Scandalous!) I became enamoured of the colonial and Revolutionary periods of history, and though I’m not involved with it in my day-to-day life, I did wind up majoring in history. I wrote my history thesis on slavery and the Constitution, but really, it was because of the climax of the movie–starting at about two minutes in this clip:

I quoted this in my thesis. Probably my favorite moment of the entire thing is at 8:25 in that–John Adams’s reaction.

Also insanely good is his song near the end of the show:

It kind of boggles my mind that so many people think of Mr. Feeny when they see William Daniels. He’ll always be John Adams to me. And I’m sure he’ll never know how much of an impact he had on my life because of this role.

A guy at the First Ladies exhibit totally made my day. In the first room of the exhibit, there’s a picture of each First Lady, her name–including her maiden name, and the years she served as First Lady. Most people ask about the women listed as “daughter-in-law” or “niece” (generally because the wife of the president died before he took office; the exception is James Buchanan, the only president who never married), but I always want someone to ask me why Eleanor Roosevelt only has one name*. And this guy did! I was SO happy.

Of course, he also made my day when he explained that he wears Yankees gear in Rhode Island not because he’s a baseball fan, but to annoy Red Sox fans. “I don’t care about baseball,” he said, “I just hate Red Sox fans.” Man, if this guy wasn’t there with his wife and kids, I would’ve given him my number.

Also making the day exciting was the presence of vomit hiding in the corner of the exhibit. Fun! I got to track down security to have it cleaned up. Apparently a docent was there when it happened and told the folks at the information desk, but didn’t actually do anything about it. This was the perfect counter to yesterday, when someone at Ford’s had a medical emergency and we had to call 911, and I spent intermission telling people to using the bathrooms in the balcony or the museum. Never a dull moment!

* Her maiden name was also Roosevelt; she and Franklin were fifth cousins. Teddy Roosevelt was Eleanor’s uncle, and actually gave her away at her wedding. So, really, she should be listed as Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt.

If you look at where the John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo did the majority of their killing in the fall of 2002, it’s like a map of where I’ve lived in the past 10 years. A mere two blocks from where I lay in bed last night, seeing confirmation that Muhammad had been executed, a woman was killed while vacuuming her minivan at a Shell station. I regularly drive by the sites of five of the other shootings. I remember the sound of the helicopters and being stopped as I drove to work to have my car searched. I recall putting groceries in my car, always in motion–harder to be a target if you’re moving around. Part of me still looks askance at white box trucks.

I also saw the shootings from afar. I was in New York City just after the first round of killings. My mom was nervous; it was my first solo business trip, and to New York! (Brooklyn, to be specific, which made me a bit nervous as well; midtown Manhattan I could handle, but Brooklyn’s a different story!) I don’t know how much it helped when I pointed out that I was apparently safer there than in Montgomery County, Maryland. I stood in Times Square and watched the news ticker tell me of shootings at home. Then, weeks later, seeing updates on CNN while at Homecoming at Gettysburg about a shooting that happened not far from where my parents had lived just a year before.

I’m not in favor of the death penalty in general, but in this case, I can’t get upset. The more I read about what the two had planned, the more satisfied I am that Muhammad is gone. Because, as this good article in the Post points out:

It might have been anyone in the cross hairs of that .223-caliber Bushmaster in those 22 days and nights when millions cowered from a roving, unseen menace — when ballfields and school yards fell still; jittery motorists squatted like baseball catchers to fill their gas tanks; ubiquitous white box trucks loomed suspicious; and the dour visage of Charles A. Moose, the tight-lipped Montgomery County police chief, filled the news.

The stalkers were elusive; the attacks, indiscriminate. And death came for the unfortunate ones in otherwise mundane moments, without warning: in gas stations and parking lots, on a bench in front of a restaurant, on the lawn of an auto dealership.

I was lucky. I still am.

I didn’t plan it, but 5 years ago, on the 15th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, I found myself at the Imperial War Museum in London, where I took this picture of a piece of the Wall. I don’t remember much from 9 November 1989 (I was 11 and in the 6th grade), other than my German teacher being very excited, and I can still see the poster she had hanging in her room for the next 3 years. But watching specials about it and reading about it…it’s so moving. And crazy to think that I’ve lived through such turbulent times. That’s a decent-sized part of why I want to visit Berlin and Moscow. In my lifetime, I’ve seen them change. Which is just crazy.

Anyway, cheers Frau Venus.

So today’s the 70th anniversary of the beginning of World War II, the invasion of Poland. That seems like an insanely long time, doesn’t it? I’ve been following a blog done by the Orwell Prize, which is run by by the Media Standards Trust, the Orwell Trust and Political Quarterly, posting the diaries of George Orwell. It started about a year ago and will go, presumably, until 2012, when Orwell’s diary ends. For a long, long time it was just him wandering around and had a lot about eggs. Seriously. A lot. But lately it’s gotten more interesting as he chronicles the political maneuverings that led to World War II. They’re also including newspaper images from those days. The beginning of today’s entry?

Invasion of Poland began this morning. Warsaw bombed. General mobilization proclaimed in England, ditto in France plus martial law.

It’s just kind of neat to see a firsthand account of it. Also, fewer mentions of eggs.

In other news, September 1 means September callups for baseball. Huzzah! Jeff Fiorentino, a.k.a. Screech, was called up from AAA Norfolk and that made me happy. He’s been doing really well. He was first called up in the middle of 2005, which probably didn’t help (he was only 22, was called up from AA, and probably was just not ready, though he did OK then [.640 OPS] and in 2006 [.683 OPS] in very limited at-bats). Anyway, yay, Screech! I admit I’m partial to him, too, because he bats lefty, has super nice blue eyes, and I have a cute picture of him from photo day back in 2005:

Screech and me

He looks OK, but it’s actually a great picture of me. Yay! (I have one with Javy Lopez from that same day, and I look wretched.) Anyway, I went to a game at Bowie last year or the year before, and the players were signing autographs before the game. I went up to Jeff and got his, and said that I was bummed I didn’t realize it was autograph day, because I had this great picture of the two of us, and bless his heart, he looked bummed and was like, “Man, that does suck!” Aww, Jeff.

(In mixed news, it looks like he actually may get a decent amount of playing time, due to Adam Jones spraining his ankle in tonight’s game. Good things never happen to Orioles in September games against the Yankees.)

One of the things I really like about volunteering at the National Museum of American History is when I can interact with history-geek kids. Like today, I was in the American Presidency exhibit. One of the pieces in the beginning of the exhibit is the coat Grover Cleveland wore to his inauguration. Now, a lot of people look at it and assume it’s Taft’s, because it’s a fairly sizable coat. I heard a little boy telling his mother he thought it was Taft’s, and I said that no, it was Cleveland’s–Taft was much bigger. The boy got excited and started talking about the bathtub they had to have made for Taft, and when I said that he could go to the National Archives and see a replica of the bathtub, his eyes positively lit up. It was awesome.

I also got to hear those magic words: “So, how are you with assassinations?” Very good. And it doesn’t sound nearly as messed up in context!

On a completely unrelated note, this afternoon I was watching television when I heard bagpipes. At first I thought it was on the tv (because why wouldn’t there be bagpipes at the O’s-Blue Jays game?), and then I saw, marching down the sidewalk, a bagpiper, followed by two drummers, then two or three random other people. I have no idea why this happened. I did see British, American, and Scottish flags hanging on a corner near my apartment, but that didn’t actually solve anything. (No signs.) Bizarre.