Monthly Archives: January 2013

January Days at Liberty Island

30 Wednesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Ellis Island, National Park Service

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Liberty Island, January 2013

Liberty Island, January 2013

Here’s a quick link to the latest goings on in New York Harbor after Superstorm Sandy.

The last few days have been unseasonably warm here in the city. I hope the weather speeds the rehabilitation process at Ellis and Liberty Islands. I won’t be able to visit until it is open to the general public, but I am eager to get out there and see the islands. Maybe I shouldn’t have been, but I was surprised at the extent of the damage. The devastation and cleanup of the national monuments in New York Harbor is a story ripe for some future historian. What they are doing now will be yet another chapter in the centuries-long history of these places.

Looking forward to spring.

(image/National Park Service)

Sunday morning coffee

27 Sunday Jan 2013

Posted by in Uncategorized

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1958 Richard Neutra sketch of Gettysburg cyclorama building

1958 Richard Neutra sketch of Gettysburg cyclorama building

It was a slow news week here at the Strawfoot. I took Friday off to rest up a bit before the spring semester begins tomorrow. The Hayfoot and I went to the Met Museum. You have until March 17 to check out Matisse: In Search of True Painting. The concise exhibit–it logs in with just 49 art works–manages to explain the evolution of Matisse’s work across the span of his career up through his death in 1954. I first grasped his penchant for painting in series after a visiting the Pompidou years ago and seeing different versions of long familiar paintings, but this show captures this tendency of Matisse’s and shows it to you in full. The Met is one of the few places in the world that could have pulled this off. Last night we watched the first episode of Mad Men. We tend to watch one series from beginning to end on Netflix before moving on to something else. A short list includes The Twilight Zone, All in the Family, The Office, Ugly Betty, and The Rockford Files. Now we’re going to sped our winter with Don Draper.

Research for the Hawley biography is slowly but surely continuing. I will undoubtedly learn a great deal along the way–otherwise why write it?–but I feel I now know what the book will say, who its audience will be, how it will “read,” and that type of thing. In some ways these hurdles seem to be the most difficult part of the project. I am finding the process scary and exhilarating in equal measure. Work continues on Theodore Roosevelt Sr. and his friend William E. Dodge Jr. as well. Civil War New York is an under-explored and misunderstood subject. I couldn’t help but mention Roosevelt to the wife when we were walking up the stairs of the Met the other day, Theodore Sr. being one of the founders of the Met Museum and all.

The last thing the world needs is more news about the old cyclorama building but here is a link to a link to what Architectural Digest has to say about  it. The piece is not long. I hope they videotape the demolition of the building when it comes down this winter.

Enjoy your Sunday.

(image/National Park Service)

Remembering Charles Beaumont

21 Monday Jan 2013

Posted by in Rod Serling

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This will interest some people more than others, but someone recently posted this 1987 memorial to writer Charles Beaumont. Richard Matheson, Roger Anker, Harlan Ellison, and son Christopher Beaumont came together in February of that year to observe the 20th anniversary of the great writer’s death. If you are looking for more on Beaumont check out JaSunni Production’s recent documentary Charles Beaumont: The Short Life of Twilight Zone’s Magic Man. For my own take, the text of my talk at the 2009 Rod Serling Conference can be found here starting on page 177. In other Beaumont news Centipede Press is publishing three Beaumont titles: an anthology titled Mass for Mixed Voices, and the novels The Intruder and Run from the Hunter. I am not sure how it works with the limited run bit. Though they are indeed handsome editions, I hope these are not designed merely for the “collectors market,” whatever that is. The Beaumont catalog deserves to be back in print for the fullest audience it deserves.

NYSHA conference

19 Saturday Jan 2013

Posted by in Historiography, New York City

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Martha Bulloch Roosevelt

Martha Bulloch Roosevelt

June seems far away during the deep freeze of mid-January, but I got the word yesterday that my proposal for the 2013 New York History conference has been accepted. The conference will be in Cooperstown–yes, that Cooperstown–in early June. I will be speaking about the personal and professional relationship of Theodore Roosevelt Sr. and William E. Dodge Jr. during the Civil War. The two were active in the Union Club of New York, among many other things.

Civil War New York is a fascinating subject filled with rogues and heroes acting shamefully and honorably in equal measure. When I was a kid I thought there was an imaginary line somewhere and that everyone North of said line was for the Union and everyone South of it for the Confederacy. The level of treachery in the North, and loyalty in the South, is something I did not fully comprehend until just a few years ago. Even better, many of these individuals were working–or even sleeping–together. Spielberg’s Lincoln captured this magnificently.

The lack of preparedness for the war is something that is lost on us today. Much of the organizational work was left to private individuals as Roosevelt and Dodge because the Federal government simply was not capable of handling it in 1861. What made Roosevelt’s situation interesting was that his wife Martha (Teddy’s mother) was a Southern belle from Georgia who had many relations fighting for the Confederacy. Gotham circa 1861-65 was a basket case of intrigue and overlapping loyalties. I cannot think of a better story than Civil War New York. Looking forward to Cooperstown.

Jackson, Mississippi: March 1961

18 Friday Jan 2013

Posted by in Civil War centennial

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Early reenactors

Early reenactors

The Mississippi Department of Archives and History has just digitized and cataloged a set of 36 photographs from the Jackson Civil War Centennial parade in March 1961. Click on Link to Electronic Resource on each individual record to check them out. You will be justly rewarded.

Interpret how you wish.

Interpret how you wish.

(images courtesy of Mississippi Department of Archives & History)

Ellis Island updates

17 Thursday Jan 2013

Posted by in Ellis Island

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We are now in mid-January and the post-Sandy progress continues at Ellis  and Liberty Islands. As I said a few months back the Park Service hopes to have the national monuments open again in early April. Between now and then I will be posting information more or less without comment to keep people up-to-date. The Jewish Daily Forward has this to say about Ellis. According to the Forward they are saying summer now. The Daily News has a smaller piece about the permanent departure of the superintendent from Liberty Island. It may surprise you to know that the Liberty/Ellis superintendent lived on the island. Sadly this tradition ended with Sandy, meaning that for the first time since 1811 no one is actually living on Bedloe’s Island. It feels strange to type it.

Weekend reading, cont’d

15 Tuesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Film, Sound, & Photography

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Tony Kushner responds.

The votes are in and Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln has been nominated for no less than twelve Academy awards. I have never thought too much about such things–don’t get me started on the less than useless Grammies, which are too irrelevant to get worked up about anyway. Still, to the extent that these things matter it seems right that Lincoln should sweep the nominations. One of the nominees is Tony Kushner, for Best Adapted Screenplay. Kushner is deserving; whatever else one might say about him, he is a fine playwright and screenwriter. Those following closely know that the book Kushner is credited with adapting into film is Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals. I never understood this because the film focuses upon the tiniest fraction of Goodwin’s 800+ page monograph. I say this not as criticism. She certainly advised Kushner here-and-there along the way as he prepared the manuscript. The film is better for this. It just seemed that the relationship between the film and book was tenuous. The New Republic’s Timothy Noah informs us that the book most directly responsible for Spielberg & Kushner’s Lincoln is in all likelihood Michael Vorenberg’s Final Freedom: The Civil War, The Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment. Noah’s article is a reminder that politics, including passage of the 13th Amendment, is a messier process than even can ever be depicted  on celluloid. And yes, if you have not seen Lincoln you should do so before it leaves the big screen.

Coming soon: World War 1 Centennial Commission

14 Monday Jan 2013

Posted by in WW1

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Liberty Memorial, Kansas City

Liberty Memorial, Kansas City

A few weeks back in late December I was on the Reference Desk when a colleague and I got on the subject of World War One. Specifically, we were talking about how, now that 2013 was here, the 100th anniversary of the Great War was just a year away. No doubt public and filmmakers have been gearing up for the observance for awhile now. You don’t just go out and film a documentary or publish a comprehensive new history of such a cataclysmic event. Such things take time.

Well, as it turns out Congress was also getting into the act: just before the holidays the House and Senate both approved the creation of a World War One Centennial Commission. The bill is now awaiting presidential signature. The twelve member organization will be based in Kansas City, Missouri. This makes sense because the National World War 1 Museum and Liberty Memorial are both in KC. If you have never been, I highly recommend. It’s worth going out of the way. (They are in Kansas City because General Pershing was from the Show Me state.)

It will be interesting to see what the commission does. They could go “narrow” by focusing only on American involvement in the war, which did not begin officially until April 1917; or, the could go “wide” and focus on the war in its entirety. Apparently they are leaning towards the latter. Commissioners will be elected in January and February, and a meeting with international counterparts will be held in Missouri in late March. I hope they do this right.

(image/Charvex)

Cyclorama building coming down

12 Saturday Jan 2013

Posted by in Gettysburg, National Park Service

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I am a little late getting to this one because I’m still catching up after vacation, but the Park Service announced this week that they will indeed be tearing down the old cyclorama building and visitor center. I have been following this story with great interest for some time now, and cannot tell you how relieved I am that they made the decision they did. The old building will probably be razed in time for the sesquicentennial this coming July. Perhaps it is a little too easy for me to say because the old building was never part of my personal Gettysburg experience–I visited for the first time in 2008 a few months after the new VC opened–but the Mission 66 structure never worked functionally or aesthetically. For one thing the air conditioning unit was directly behind the painting, blowing dirt and dust into the art work; for another the panels of the 12 1/2 ton cyclorama hung unevenly, causing further damage. The old building will always be part of the story of Gettysburg National Military Park, especially for the generation that came of age during the centennial. One of my best friends fondly recalls visiting from New Jersey as part of a field trip in the early 1970s. These are no small things; preserving and interpreting our culture are why out national parks and monuments exist in the first place. Still, we create new traditions each time we visit Gettysburg. This is what keeps it meaningful and alive. I am looking forward to seeing what the powers-that-be do with the land upon which the old building currently stands.

In a somewhat related story GNMP is taking advantage of the slower winter months to clean the cyclorama painting itself. The public is invited to watch the process, which is being undertaken from 8:00-5:00 Monday-Friday through February 1. Shelby Foote once famously said that one should visit the Civil War parks at the time of year during which the battle took place (Shiloh in spring, Fredericksburg in December, etc) to best understand what took place. This makes sense on one level, but I disagree. The history of the parks–now 150 years old and counting–is part of the story as well. Go when you can and you might be surprised at what you see.