History

The Past is Present posting for April 8th about timing told of a volume of a periodical that got away from AAS despite the urging of Marcus McCorison.  This was the National Magazine published in Richmond, Virginia and Washington D.C. in 1799-1800 by James Lyon.  He was a Vermont printer who fled the state.  Mr. [...]

February 1937. "Southern Illinois character. McLeansboro, Illinois." Photo by Russell Lee for the Resettlement Administration. View full size.

Brian Sewell laments the state of art history teaching today, including the neglect of Byzantine studies; though he ends on a hopeful note-  on THES site. Yes, an art history education should open up great cultural possibilities whatever your station in life. “If, on graduating, the student of art history has grasped enough of the discipline to form a chronological frame for further observation and experience, then he can add to it. No matter whether he becomes a monied banker or digs tunnels for the new fast train to Birmingham, his appreciation of paintings in the Louvre and the Prado (or even Birmingham), the architecture of Amsterdam and Angkor Wat, and the sculpture of Michelangelo and pre-Columbian Mexico, will be enriched by what he sees and reads and hears. No other compulsory subject (and certainly not mathematics) pursued in our adolescent years could so swiftly, broadly and ubiquitously elevate our cultural lives.” Am I glad that I recently taught some Byzantine art, at least its influence on the early renaissance, like the painter Berlinghieri shown here . I can’t run to Pre-Columbian, but I will be doing some Egyptian and Etruscan art on my Vatican blog. Watch this space.  

Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} UCL Museums and Public Engagement (including the Grant Museum, Petrie Museum and Art Museum) are inviting your input to help them improve the ways in which they promote their museums and public engagement activities and communicate with their existing and potential audiences and visitors. Please note that you do not have to have visited any of the museums to take part. On completion of the survey you will be entered into a prize draw with £50 worth of vouchers of the winner's choice as the prize. The deadline is 4 June.Complete the survey:http://bit.ly/132y26y Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

For those people who have had trouble finding the information about the internship on the Griffith Institute Facebook page, I have copied and pasted the information here. I have no more details than those copied here, so please ask any questions via the contact details below.The Mellon Foundation grant award for the Online Egyptological Bibliography (OEB) includes provision for an annual internship of one month to be held in Oxford. Accordingly, we are seeking a person with an interest in bibliography & the development of databases in Egyptology to join the team for this period, during which they will gain experience of building an online bibliographic resource while contributing to the enhancement of the OEB database.They will be able to devote some time to their own research, using the unrivalled facilities of the Sackler Library as well as other resources in Oxford. We envisage that this person will be a graduate student of Egyptology (or a closely related subject) who will be willing to live & work in Oxford for a period of one month between July & September 2013. The precise period to be spent in Oxford need not coincide with a calendar month. Knowledge of Egyptological publications is essential, as is a concern for accuracy & consistency. The person must have a reading knowledge of French & German.The intern will be reimbursed reasonable travel costs within the UK & will be helped with finding & paying for accommodation in Oxford, up to a total of £1000. Those who are interested should write to R. Gareth Roberts (gareth.roberts [at] orinst.ox.ac.uk) with a letter, CV & the name of a referee (preferably their current graduate supervisor). We should like to receive expressions of interest as soon as possible, and no later than Friday 14 June, 2013.Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

On this date in 1872, a faltering John Presswood Jr., “nearly 18 years old,” was publicly hanged in Smithville, Tenn., for a still-infamous crime there. He’s the last person to suffer that fate in DeKalb County. This image (click for a larger version) of the Presswood hanging — in which the gallows practically disappear into the scenery — comes from the Library of Congress. It was all the way back in late 1870 that Presswood murdered 36-year-old Rachel Fowler Billings, a Civil War widow remarried to a man who unfortunately was away rafting the Caney Fork River. Presswood savagely axed the woman to death in her house, in the presence of her three children — and bashed 11-year-old Inez, the oldest of them, with the axe as well. Inez survived, but hadn’t seen the attacker. Her three-year-old (!) half-sister provided the identification: “It was Bill Presswood.” While the assailant calmly cleaned himself up with the family water bucket, the traumatized kids comforted each other around the butchered corpse of their mother. (Later, other women of the community would shrink from the neighborly job of tidying up poor Rachel for burial — so horribly had she been mauled.) In the end, the badly injured Inez had to hoof it half a mile to the nearest neighbor to summon help. An estimated 8,000 people crowded Smithville’s courthouse square for the execution. The sheriff charged with conducting it made sure to give them a pulse-pounding, excrutiating (especially for Presswood!) show. Immediately following the sermon and reading of the confession, Sheriff Henry Blackburn put a hood over Presswood’s head, attached the rope tightly and stood back. With his hand on the trip bar, he intoned, “Presswood, you have five minutes to Live.” The crowd surged forward, and then relaxed. Again Sheriff Blackburn said, “Presswood, you have four minutes to live.” Beside the lonely figure in the hood, Sheriff Blackburn stood out in sharp contrast. He was a handsome figure, tall, well proportioned and filled with the dignity of his office. He was “High Sheriff” of Dekalb County. After seemingly hours Sheriff Blackburn announced, “Presswood, you have three minutes to live.” Occasionally a sob as if a heart were being torn from a body was heard, but there was no outburst from the crowd. The stillness of the May morning was again broken by the commanding voice of Sheriff Blackburn, “Presswood, you have two minutes to live.” By now several persons in the crowd, no doubt from a pang of conscience, were shifting from one foot to another. Neighbors look guilty at neighbors and the calmest man of all was Sheriff Blackburn as he announced, “Presswood, you have one minute to live.” Brave members of the crowd gazed intently, wonderingly as the still form with the hood on his head stood torically on the scaffold just a few feet above their heads. Suddenly Sheriff Blackburn shouted, “Presswood, you die” and sprung the trap. The body jerked at the end of the rope, quivered slightly, and was still.

The New York Public Library and the state of Pennsylvania announced Wednesday that they will both exhibit the library’s rarely-seen original copy of the Bill of Rights over the next six years. Beginning in the fall of 2014, the 225th anniversary of the drafting of the Bill of Rights, the document will spend equal time on display at the New York Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on Fifth Avenue and the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. After the six years are up, the parchment will be on display at the library for at least 60% of the time, but Philadelphia will get custody the other 40% for the next 94 years. This landmark agreement came about because there’s a good chance the NYPL’s copy was originally Pennsylvania’s. In 1789, after approving the first twelve potential amendments to the Constitution (two of them didn’t make it into the ratified version), Congress commissioned 14 original copies. They were all signed by Vice President John Adams, president of the Senate. One was kept in by the federal government and the rest sent to each of the 13 states to use during ratification deliberations. The federal government’s copy is on display at the National Archives and Records Administration, while most of the other copies are in the archives of their states. The copies of four states are missing, however. Georgia, Maryland, New York, and Pennsylvania lost their copies somewhere along the road. Two unidentified copies survive, one in the Library of Congress, the other at the New York Public Library. The NYPL’s copy was donated by iron magnate John Stewart Kennedy (no relation to the later dynasty) in 1896. He had acquired it from Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, a surgeon and collector of American history. There have long been rumblings that Emmet may have somehow gotten his hands on Pennsylvania’s copy of the Bill of the Rights which went missing in the late 1800s. New York’s is thought to have been destroyed in a fire at the state archives. Although there is no proof of which state it once belonged to, the possibility that it’s Pennsylvania’s copy underpins this historic sharing agreement. The document hasn’t been on public display in decades because of its delicate condition. It’s been very carefully preserved over the past century by experts at the NYPL’s Manuscripts and Archives Division and shown to visitors by appointment only. Display and travel will be made possible by a new high-tech encasement. To ensure the document’s safety during display and while it travels, a special case will be constructed by the National Institute for Standards and Technology, based on technology developed for the Charters of Freedom at the National Archives. Estimated to cost $600,000, this crucial and state-of-the-art preservation measure is made possible as part of a generous gift from New York Public Library Trustee Ed Wachenheim III and his wife Sue. It’s one of those nifty contraptions that replaces the oxygen inside the case with inert argon gas, reduces damaging light and stabilizes humidity. It’s basically a portable micro-environment ideal for preserving historic parchment. The exhibits in Pennsylvania and New York will both be free of charge to all visitors. “This is a win for Pennsylvania, New York and the citizens of the United States,” said Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett. “For the first time in decades, this historic document will be seen by We the People, the people who were granted these inalienable rights and privileges that we are still guided by today.”

….Okay, so today is Thursday, not Wednesday. Sh. Don’t tell anyone. Writing is a very solitary pursuit. No matter who you are, you basically end up alone in a room with the computer screen glowing before you (in days of yore, pen and paper were used–imagine!). Something has to keep us writers company. If it’s not other people (even if a writer sits in a crowded cafe to write, they’re basically alone), then it often has to be music. For a writer, music can serve many purposes. It can set the mood. If you need to get angry, or someone in the story is furious, then some death metal will get your juices flowing. If you want peacefulness, maybe some soothing classical music. Or Enya. Music can also just serve as background music. A lot of times, when I put on music while I write, it’s music I know very well. It doesn’t take any conscious effort to listen to it. My brain tunes it out–and dumps it straight into my unconscious. And while it’s doing that, it isn’t–thank God–bothering me. So strangely, putting on music actually mutes part of my brain. I can focus. For me, music can also be about evoking the time period. Eighteenth century? Well, put on some Mozart or Haydn–something nice and classical, preferably upbeat. (I like the stuff with real strong melody (hence, Mozart and Haydn). I enjoy the airy, playful, beauty-loving side of the century.) Nineteenth century? Try some classical hymns and spirituals (more on these later). If I were writing in the twentieth century, I’d probably break out the appropriate music (jazz, rockabilly, big band, whatever). Sometimes, the music gets all mixed up with the story. As I was writing one piece seven or eight years ago, I listened almost exclusively to Coldplay’s Parachutes. Now every time I hear that album, I get this strange, reflexive memory of that story. It’s like remembering a dream, and it’s very eerie. The album has a melancholy feel to it; not by coincidence, so does that story. Of course, that was when I listened to a Discman and could only listen to one CD at a time. Now my computer and MP3 player have a ton of songs. Like most of the world, I’ve moved to singles and away from albums. But that hasn’t stopped me from associating a few songs/albums strongly with my writing. I’ve been listening to a lot of fun.’s Some Nights, and a lot of the Marie-Antoinette movie soundtrack (a wonderful soundtrack made up mostly of ’80′s punk). Here are a few particular songs that have strong associations for me: My favorite. This song by Queen is fantastic in its own right. But the lyrics really seal the deal for me. Every time I listen to the song, I think of Nicole d’Oliva and the novel I wrote about her. Marie-Antoinette is mentioned; Paris is mentioned; and she “spoke just like a baroness” (Nicole pretended to be a baroness for a time). The swagger fits the time period, too. I would love nothing more than to see a movie version of the Affair of the Diamond Necklace that had a montage to this song. I can see it now: Nicole getting dressed up in her elaborate eighteenth century finery to the strains of Killer Queen. This one I tend to associate with the time I spent at home, in the 200-year-old house I grew up in. I was beginning to work on my Antebellum South project. The spirituality and sadness in the song fit with the story and the setting–and I still think of that time when I hear it. This one is inextricably linked for me to a particular character. He’s a duelist and a fugitive. He’s cheeky and irreverent. He’s a good person in general, but has a wicked streak. I love him to death (in fact, I loved him so much that I did, indeed, kill him by the end of the novel). And while I was writing about the Antebellum South, I decided to listen to some authentic tunes from the time. Here are a few from the Civil War and

We often think about fashionable First Ladies as someone like Jackie Kennedy or Nancy Reagan. But Sarah Polk was also quite the fashionable First Lady! This article showcases her clothes and talks about her fashion - as well as she knew how to make her buck for clothes go a long way: After their marriage in 1824 James and Sarah Polk practiced thrift, a habit that they carried into the White House, despite the high costs of frequent entertaining and maintaining proper appearances. The first lady developed dress patterns that she liked and then hired seamstresses to make them using elegant and expensive materials - velvet, satin, and silk - decorated with imported fringe, ribbons and lace. She avoided frills and preferred solid colors that flattered her exotic dark hair and olive complexion. The article talks about Mrs. Polk's clothing choices, including her own seamstress a free black woman, and her order to Paris. Pictures of many of the dresses are included.

May 1942. Washington, D.C. "Victory Program salvage drive. Schoolboy volunteers to go from house to home collecting scrap paper." Medium format nitrate negative by Marjory Collins for the Office of War Information. View full size.