Blame the men!

As you know, it wasn’t always true in the United States that women were “permitted” to vote.

In 1889, legislators in the Wyoming territory approved a constitution establishing the right of women to vote. Wyoming became the national pioneer in legalizing women’s suffrage in 1890 when it was admitted to the union as the 44^th state. (As territories, Wyoming and a couple others allowed women to vote as early as 1869).

The Isle of Man in the Irish Sea gave women who owned property the right to vote in 1881. In 1893 New Zealand became the first country to establish national women’s suffrage.

  

In America, women were unable to vote in most eastern states until August 18, 1920, when the 19^th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified.

So, when you’re thinking about U. S. history, keep in mind that men get all the credit—and all the blame—for the actions of the colonies and the national government for the first three hundred years or so.

Kids will be kids -- update

Speed!

That tolerance thing

The cod in "Cape Cod"

It wasn't the good old days....

Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016 All rights reserved.

Kids will be kids -- update

There has been a fascinating and, I think, poorly understood evolution of parenting and childhood since the earliest colonial days of the American experience.

Paula S. Fass writes about it in The End of American Childhood: A History of Parenting from Life on the Frontier to the Managed Child (Princeton University Press, 2006). A New York Times reviewer points out that the narrative gets a bit lost in the most recent history of “helicopter parents” who are overwhelmingly focused on controlling and protecting their children so they grow up to great lives with success and affluence and notable careers and….cue the all-important play date….make sure Joshua can get into Yale….

It’s intriguing to me to understand that colonial parents rather consciously moved away from the Old World view of children as economic resources, and adopted a more relaxed willingness to give their kids some degree of independence and flexibility in their paths to adult life. Of course, kids were put to work at a young age, but parents gave them opportunity and approval to feel engaged in the work and be open to wider horizons and innovation. Europeans thought that American children were “rude, unmannerly and bold.”

There were many circumstantial differences at work. In the colonies and early United States, there was an abundance of cheap land and a shortage of labor, and thus, pervasive opportunities for personal success. The European tradition of primogeniture was largely absent: on our side of the Atlantic, a father’s land and estate did not pass automatically to the firstborn son, so the more egalitarian inheritance practices boosted the life prospects of most children.

Of course, there’s another side to the childhood narrative: slave children in America were often treated as economic units by their owners. That’s a disgusting reality in our history.

Speed!

That tolerance thing

The cod in "Cape Cod"

It wasn't the good old days....

It started out as a "bachelor's" degree....

Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016 All rights reserved.

It wasn’t the good old days….

Sarah Parker Remond

“ ...in 1853, Sarah Parker Remond and two other African Americans entered a Boston theater intending to enjoy a Mozart opera. When the manager discovered they were people of color, he directed them to the segregated balcony. Remond and her companions refused to sit there. When they were asked to leave, an argument ensued, and the police were summoned. One of the officers handled Sarah roughly. Refusing to be intimidated, she sued and won $500 in damages.”

Source: MassMoments.org

Let’s be clear: this happened in Massachusetts, a boiling cauldron of anti-slavery activism in the middle of the 19^th century.

It started out as a "bachelor's" degree....

"Mannish Boy"....hold that thought

Okay, it’s “O. K.”—OK?

Alexander's Ragtime Band

Another thought about biographies

Do you cross bridges?

Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016 All rights reserved.

A dark corner of history….

Here’s a despicable flashback you’ll wish you don’t have to believe:

May 30, 1922, the formal dedication of the new Lincoln Memorial in Washington. 

The few black folks who were invited were forced to sit in a separate, roped-off section. Robert Moton, president of Tuskegee Institute—he was a featured speaker that day—was not permitted to sit on the speaker’s platform, and instead had to sit in the segregated section.

A reporter for the Chicago Defender, appalled by this flagrant display of racism, wrote “The venomous snake of segregation reared its head at the ded­ication…The conquered have become victorious."

"Mama!"

"...ain't no protest song."

"A Man of Feeling..."

The boob tube....

Book reviews: how they got started....

"...they tend to joy..."

Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016 All rights reserved.

“…ain’t no protest song.”

Maybe it’s been a while since you said to yourself “Oh gosh, I’m getting old.”

It’s been 54 years since Bob Dylan introduced “Blowin’ In The Wind” in Greenwich Village. He recorded this iconic song a couple weeks later, and it was released in 1963. Dylan claimed he wrote the song in 10 minutes. The Beatles claimed it was one of the songs that altered their early musical development.

I can mention my personal experience of hearing “Blowin’ In The Wind” sung by just about every band that played for the troops in Vietnam, more or less at the same time they were belting out “Leaving On A Jet Plane.”

Dylan blandly claimed “this here ain’t no protest song.” Of course it was.

Maybe you forget some of the words. Here they are:

How many roads must a man walk down
before you call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail
before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, and how many times must the cannon balls fly
before they're forever banned?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

Yes, and how many years can a mountain exist
before it is washed to the sea?
Yes, and how many years can some people exist
before they're allowed to be free?
Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head
and pretend that he just doesn't see?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

Yes, and how many times must a man look up
before he can see the sky?
Yes, and how many ears must one man have
before he can hear people cry?
Yes, and how many deaths will it take 'til he knows
that too many people have died?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

"A Man of Feeling..."

The boob tube....

Your great-grandmother didn't have a teddy bear

How many are enough?

Homework....think again....

Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016 All rights reserved.

The boob tube….

My parents were early adopters in the early 1950s: they bought a television set. How they rationalized that expenditure I do not know. I think it was a portable, maybe with a 7-inch screen.

They were among millions who were putting down the cash to acquire technology with rabbit ears.

TV in its infancy was the fastest blooming technology in the history of humankind.

At the end of World War II there were only a few tens of thousands of privately owned television sets. Within 10 years, two-thirds of American households had one. By the early 1960s more than 90 percent of homes had a boob tube.

In the early years, when few households had a set, the neighborhood tended to gather at the house with a TV for a social evening, watching whatever was on one of the (maximum 3) available channels. I was a kid when the family drove into Philadelphia to watch The Wizard of Oz on my uncle’s brand-new color TV.

I don’t watch TV now—stopped channel checking almost seven years ago. OK, I make exceptions for the Super Bowl and the State of the Union address and election returns in early November.

I’m bound to say I don’t think I’m missing much.

The news media industry, particularly TV, has become a beast with no scruples. I think it is deranging our society.

At least, in the old days, we had the Milton Berle Show.

Your great-grandmother didn't have a teddy bear

When safety standards were more interesting....

"...led by donkeys..."

Fahrenheit 451, anyone?

Maybe your kid shouldn't go to college

Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016 All rights reserved.

What it doesn’t say….

I’m pretty sure that a lot of folks thought teaching was a proper job for women in 1915 in Sacramento.

Of course, there weren’t a lot of other career paths open to women who wanted to work, or needed to work.

I wonder what women thought about applying for a teaching job, and, of course, complying with the rules and regulations. At least, judging by this example, teachers had a more or less free rein in deciding what and how they should teach.

Wait a minute. I just noticed it doesn’t say anything about romping naked with wild animals in public. Does that mean….?

Donkey and elephant enter politics

Your pedestrian ancestors

Eight-year-old kids go on strike

Worse than Fahrenheit 451

I didn't bother on Thursday night

Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016 All rights reserved.

“See the [segregated] USA, in your Chevrolet…”

Imagine that you’re traveling with your family by car, and you get held up in a town where you didn’t plan to spend the night.

Imagine whipping out your iPhone to check for local hotels that will rent a room to people like you.

Imagine that most hotels won’t give you a room, because you’re a Muslim. Or gay. Or black.

That’s whacky, you think?

Maybe you never heard of The Negro Motorist Green-Book.

In the 1930s, black travelers started carrying the Green-Book to help them find hotels and restaurants and gas stations that would serve black customers. In some areas there were plenty of hotels and restaurants and gas stations that wouldn’t do that. In some areas, it was called “Jim Crow.” In other places, it was just the way things were.

In 1936 a black New York City mailman named Victor Hugo Green thought of publishing a listing “of all first-class hotels throughout the United States that catered to Negroes.” Ultimately, he put together the first Green-Book, initially focused on the Big Apple, with listings for restaurants, service stations, hotels, tourist homes, taverns, liquor stores, beauty parlors, nightclubs, drugstores and tailors. That 10-page book sold for 25 cents. By 1949 it ran to 80 pages.

Every year Green put out about 15,000 copies of the book and continued to expand its geographic coverage. Jim Crow wasn’t confined to the South. One researcher has documented thousands of towns through the U.S. that were called "sundown towns" because they didn’t want black people to linger overnight. The typical advice to black folks was “get out before sundown.” For example, in the early 20^th century a Connecticut town put up a sign that said: “Whites Only Within City Limits After Dark.”

The Green-Book was last published in 1964. The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964.

readin', writin', 'rithmetic....a little history

Gen. Grant kicked out the Jews....wha?

First flight—unbelievable

Book review: The Climate Casino

Is it properly chilled?

Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016 All rights reserved.

Evolution “deniers”

Charles Darwin went to his printer 156 years ago with the book that stood science, philosophy, religion and mankind on their collective heads.

On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life  was a smash hit—in the bookshops, at least. The first press run of 1,250 copies sold out quickly, and the book went through six editions in 13 years.

A few years ago a first edition copy was sold by Christie’s for $194,500. Bibliophiles guess that perhaps 1,000 copies of the first edition are still tucked away in institutional and private libraries. Several of them are sold every year.

You probably know that, although the book enjoyed some degree of popularity among both scientists and late 19^th century popular science readers, Darwin’s startling conclusion--that human beings evolved from ape-like ancestors--was wildly debated and disputed immediately after he published the book. The debate, dispute and denial continues today.

It seems to me that the “evolution deniers” got a 100-year head start on the today’s global climate change deniers.

For some folks, it is an apparently enduring capacity of human nature to ignore facts and scientifically rigorous thinking when some combination of ignorance, myth, belief, greed and fear makes it comfortable to do so.

Read here about the other evolution theorist, Alfred Russel Wallace

The Revolutionary War didn't end at Yorktown

Keeping track of time

Mr. Grumpy

Book review: Saint Martin's Summer

The art of Mahalia Jackson

Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2015 All rights reserved.

The first “Indian” treaty

White Europeans signed the first peace treaty with Native Americans more than 394 years ago, less than six months after the Pilgrims arrived in Plymouth harbor.

It was honored for more than 50 years.

The rest, sadly, is American history.

The good ship Mayflower arrived in Cape Cod Bay in November 1620, carrying 101 English settlers. Most of them were Puritan Separatists who had left the Church of England behind when they embarked for North America. (They intended to land at the mouth of the Hudson River in what is now New York, but ocean storms blew them off course).

A few months later Captain Myles Standish and his men made first contact with some of the estimated 5,000 Wampanoag people who inhabited the region. A short time later, their leader, Massasoit, visited the English settlement.

On April 1, 1621, the Pilgrims made a defensive alliance with Massasoit, signing an agreement that neither group would “doe hurt” to the other. This first treaty had a remarkable enforcement provision: if a Wampanoag violated its terms, he would be sent to Plymouth for judgment and punishment by the colonists; if a European broke the law, his case would be handled by the Wampanoags.

I couldn’t readily find any details on any breaches of the treaty and how enforcement was handled in fact.

We can take note that such even-handed, cross-cultural enforcement of treaty provisions was not the norm, and, in fact, our colonial history is filled with examples of treaties that were honored in the breach but not otherwise.

Massasoit and his sachems didn’t know what they were getting into.

Less than 60 years later, disease and warfare had killed most of the Wampanoags.

Women have the right to vote

First robbery of a moving train

Ford's assembly line, 1913 style

Book review: Girl With A Pearl Earring

The wisdom of Gandhi (part 4)

Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2015 All rights reserved.

No surprise here

Making profits and the foibles of human nature don’t seem to have any trouble co-existing, and they have done so for a long time.

I came across this somewhat incidental observation in a book on the history of clocks and timekeeping:

“This maritime struggle was linked to commercial rivalry. For both countries the eighteenth century was a period of rapid growth of trade and competition in what were known as colonial wares: sugar, coffee, tea, tobacco—what I like to call Europe’s ‘big fix.’ “  

The author, David Landes, was referring to the long-running naval policy and tactical conflicts between England and France.

The thing that struck me is: all four of those “colonial wares” are addictive commodities. There wasn’t any difficulty about selling the stuff. The rivalry was all about who would transport it from the colonies to Europe, and who would cash in when it was finally sold to the end users.

Eighteenth century mercantilism had many dimensions, and this was one of them.

Source:

David Landes, Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1983), 159.

Science ruins everything....

Book review: Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer

Woodstock: that was a music thing, right?

Book review: Address Unknown

"The someday, faraway passages"

Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2015 All rights reserved.

Masters of war, revisited

World War I got started in earnest 101 years ago, when Russia and Germany declared a mutual state of war on August 1, 1914. France piled on a couple days later, and Britain did the same within hours.

The textbooks say that WWI was provoked a month earlier by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, on June 28. The shots fired by a Bosnian Serb nationalist led to 20 million military and civilian deaths.

A more accurate understanding of the origins of the war—and any war—must include a recognition that the effective causes of war are the many, sometime independent and sometimes overlapping, incremental acts and plans of individuals and governments that finally make conflict seem “inevitable.”

The European powers, including Russia, had been jockeying for years for economic power and political hegemony or dominance on the continent. Britain and Germany had been openly competing for naval superiority on the seas and coastal waterways. The 19^th century monarchical and dynastic powers were struggling to retain power in an increasingly hostile international environment.

The brutal fact is that the European powers had been preparing for war for a long time. It really wasn’t a great big surprise in the summer of 1914 when it started.

The bitter truth is that many leaders, and many of the men and women who would become cannon fodder, welcomed the advent of World War I.

The frightening reality is that human nature hasn’t changed in the last 100 years.

The Canadians are coming!

Book reviewing, the dubious career path....

Bicycle what?

Plugging the meter....

Colonization: it didn't work out....

Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2015 All rights reserved.

Change is hard

A lot of folks didn’t know what to do with the new “rock and roll” music in the mid-1950s.

Some folks in Santa Cruz, California, thought they darn sure did know what to do about it.

On June 3, 1956, city officials decreed a complete ban on “rock-and-roll and other forms of frenzied music” at all public gatherings, and justified it because the music was “detrimental to both the health and morals of our youth and community.”

Seems that a couple hundred teens in the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium had been swingin’ and swayin’ to the music of Chuck Higgins and His Orchestra. Santa Cruz police arrived about midnight to check things out, and Lt. Richard Overton reported the crowd was “engaged in suggestive, stimulating and tantalizing motions induced by the provocative rhythms of an all-negro band.” Of course, the cops shut the gig down and sent everyone home.

What starts out here as a great reason to get snarky—about the older generation that just didn’t get it—quickly turns into an ugly example of completely transparent racism.

Mr.Kesey

The cops and the city fathers must have been choking on their Cheerios 10 years later when Santa Cruz was a high-profile nexus of the West Coast counterculture scene. For goodness sakes, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters hung out there.

The Merry Pranksters

And I guess a few more all-negro bands showed up, too.

Like, drug-infused hootenanny, y’know?

I’m guessing that Lt. Overton figured out that change is hard.

"...they did not mind fighting..."

Long distance....a different concept

The Great War....not

Bonnie and Clyde, redux

First woman to run for president? Think 1872....

Direct to California, c. 1869

Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2015 All rights reserved.

The Kent State thing

Tip: If the guy has a loaded gun, don’t throw stones at him.

The average American living today hadn’t been born when Ohio State National Guard troops killed four student protesters and wounded eight on the campus of Kent State University on May 4, 1970.

Campus rallies against the Vietnam War had been banned by the college, but about 2,000 students defied the ban and turned out to throw rocks and shout insults at the fully-armed Guardsmen, who had arrived on campus the previous day and had already used tear gas to disperse protesters.

Around noon, the National Guard again ordered students to disperse, fired tear gas and advanced with fixed bayonets. With. Fixed. Bayonets. Within minutes, the young Guardsmen fired more than 60 rounds into the student crowds. Four years later, a federal court threw out all charges against the shooters.

As it happened, I was in Vietnam at the time, serving our country. When I heard the grisly Kent State news, in US Army headquarters in Danang, my first reaction was: why would angry young men and angry young women provocatively throw stones at scared young men in uniform who are holding loaded guns with fixed bayonets? I also remember wondering where they got the stones—next time you go to a college campus, count the number of stones you see lying on the ground. I didn’t actually feel sympathetic toward the student protesters.

Today, I feel somewhat more sympathetic. I’m real sure that no student in that mob at Kent State was seriously afraid that the guys with helmets and guns would shoot at them. Kent State is part of America, right!?

Today, I feel sad that on May 4, 1970, some Americans who thought they were doing the right thing decided to piss off other Americans who were carrying loaded guns, and some Americans who thought they were doing the right thing aimed their rifles at other Americans and pulled the triggers.

Today, I spend a fair amount of time thinking about how hard it is for all of us, separately and together,  to figure out what is “the right thing.”

Sleep tight!

A good thing in 1854

A 1912 graduation test for 8th graders

"Blood-and-thunder" for one thin dime

Long line at the ticket window....

The 1896 Olympics cost $50,000 or so

Lest we forget....

"Check's in the mail" -- Pony Express style

Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2015 All rights reserved.

Columbus didn’t “discover” America

Yeah, I know what I learned in school, and you know what you learned….

Fact is, though, Columbus never set  foot on the North American mainland—strictly speaking, he didn’t “discover” America.

He “discovered” Cuba, Haiti/Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, other islands in the Caribbean, Central American and South America during his four voyages from Europe in 1492-1504.

Strictly speaking, as far as we know, Ponce de Leon was the first European to put a footstep in the sand on a North American shore, in what we now call Florida, in 1513.

….and, strictly speaking, none of the Spanish conquistadores discovered America.

The First Peoples of  the American hemisphere got there first.

There were tens of millions of Native Americans in the North, Central and South Americas at the time of the first Spanish contact and conquests. In the Viceroyalty of New Spain—including Florida, the American Southwest, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean—an estimated 25 million indigenous people had already created advanced cultures and civilizations. Perhaps there were a similar number in the South American Empire of the Incas before the advent of the Spaniards. Within 100 years, 95% of these original people of America were dead as a result of war and disease.

The Spanish adventurers did not invade an empty wilderness. They conquered and killed millions of the original inhabitants, and took their riches and their land.

Let’s call it as it was.

Source:

Bernard Bailyn, Robert Dallek, David Brion Davis, David Herbert Donald, John  L. Thomas and Gordon S. Wood, The Great Republic: A History of the American People, 4^th ed. (Lexington, MA: D. C.  Heath and Company, 1992), vol. 1, 7-14. 

Chautauqua, revisited....

....another 3rd grade tour

Gee willikers, six miles an hour!

Women who pioneered electronic music

"Blood-and-thunder" for only 10 cents

"...the peregrines..."

The umbrella thing....

Global climate change: ka-ching!

Chautauqua, revisited....

....another 3rd grade tour

Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2014 All rights reserved.