If Stonewall and Ulysses had internet…

16 Tuesday Oct 2012

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I’m not sure what to make of this, but…

The Library of Congress announced Tuesday that it will launch [a] blog [of] diaries, letters and other writings pulled from its collection. It will chronicle the sacrifices and accomplishments of both North and South to accompany a major new exhibit, “The Civil War in America.”

The idea is for historical figures to “blog” the Civil War in their own voices through their own correspondence from the period. This will either be really good or really cheesy. I’m looking forward to seeing what they do with this. The potential is certainly there; the LOC holds a significant amount of source material to pull from to say the least. November 12 is the opening date for the exhibit and website.

(image/American Treasure’s Gallery, Andreas Praefcke)

 

 

Lincoln’s voice

14 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by in Film, Sound, & Photography

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So often when we see/hear Lincoln portrayed by an actor, Abe comes across as past James Earl Jones, part King Lear. I suppose we have been conditioned to think that the Gettysburg Address came out that November day sounding like the Sermon on the Mount. It is well-documented, however, that Lincoln had a pitch-piteched nasally twang. Daniel Day-Lewis, somewhat defensively, recounts trying to get the sixteenth president’s voice correct.

(Hat tip the Hayfoot)

From the trenches of the National Archives

12 Friday Oct 2012

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Organizing and cataloging archive and library holdings is a time consuming and laborious task. This is something that is lost on many people when they sit down and read a history book. Those primary sources used by researchers didn’t catalog, file and box themselves. The National Archives recently created this video honoring 295 volunteers who each donated at least 100 hours to the NA. All told these individuals contributed over 42,000 hours to various projects.

Autumn bookshelf

11 Thursday Oct 2012

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With the season at Governors Island over and a few projects now behind me, I have set aside October to catch up on a few things, explore the city a bit, and do some reading for myself. Last week I downloaded Walter Stahr’s new biography, Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man, to my kindle. I am increasingly interested in the decades just before and just after the war itself. You cannot understand the war without doing so. It is fascinating to see how the war changed our society. There is a significant difference between 1855 America and 1870 America. It’s the Civil War Era. I am also reading Ike’s Bluff: President Eisenhower’s Secret Battle to Save the World. The Ike bio has been my subway read during my morning and evening commute. Two months ago I backordered David S. Hartwig’s To Antietam Creek: The Maryland Campaign of September 1862. When I got home this evening the package was there on the dining room table, the Hayfoot having brought it in from the mailbox. Campaign is the key word. This is the first of a projected two-volume set about the events of September 1862. After watching all the Antietam coverage a few weeks back and reading Brian Matthew Jordan’s Unholy Sabbath: The Battle of South Mountain in History and Memory, I have been eager to read the Hartwig book for some time.

Speaking of getting out, a friend and I are going to Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx this weekend.  This fall and winter I intend to visit several cemeteries in New York and New Jersey. October and November are the best time of the year here in Gotham.

Spielberg in Gettysburg; Lincoln at Lincoln Center

09 Tuesday Oct 2012

Posted by in Film, Sound, & Photography

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Update: The New York Film Festival, celebrating its 50th year, is always a tough ticket. Never was this truer than last night when a sold out audience at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall enjoyed a secret screening of Lincoln. The film opens nationwide on November 9th.

We have been looking forward to Stephen Spielberg’s Lincoln biopic in our house for some time, not least because the Hayfoot has a thing for both Abe and Daniel Day-Lewis. Apparently the film has been sitting in the can for some time, since spring. From what I understand the director waited for a late November release because he did not want the film to influence the presidential election in any way. At first I though this was silly, but the more I thought about it the more it made sense. Intentionally or not–and it is too good a marketing angle to think it was not a factor the decision of when to release–a November opening also means that the film coincides with the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. This year Spielberg will be the keynote speaker at this year’s Dedication Day ceremony on November 19th.

(image/Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln)

A museum Monday

08 Monday Oct 2012

Posted by in Monuments and Statuary, Museums

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Young Husband: First Marketing, Lilly Martin Spencer (1854)

I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art today for Holiday Monday. I had the museum almost entirely to myself, in part I suspect because many folks worked today and those who didn’t were outdoors enjoying the cool weather. The Holiday Mondays on which the Met tends to get the most traffic are Martin Luther King Jr and Presidents Days, when more people are off and everyone is trying to find something to do indoors because it is so cold out. Someone at the museum told me that next year the museum is going to be open every Monday, as I believe if once used to be. I cannot get enough of the New American Wing. I love the confluence of art and history, especially in the antebellum period before photography when realism was more important for our understanding of society.

I was at a public function last Wednesday where someone mentioned the beautiful Augustus Saint-Gaudens Farragut statue in Madison Square Park. She had recently read David McCullough’s The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris and was especially moved by McCullough’s take on the sculptor’s efforts to bring the artwork to reality. (The short version is here.) This led to a discussion of how much thought, tim, and effort artists expend on and for their work. That conversation was going through my mind when I checked out Gauden’s mock-up for the larger piece:

Admiral David Glasgow Farragut
Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1879-1880)

Speaking of museums, in late spring I mentioned a trip a friend and I took to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The clip below is from an exhibit that opened this week at the New-York Historical Society about New York City during World War 2. I have always been entranced by this time period, partially because of my love for Woody Allen movies and Pete Hamill’s stories and non-fiction. Both saw the war and the city through the prism of young boys’ eyes. I have this one penciled in for Black Friday. It is hard to believe Thanksgiving is just six weeks away.

(images courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art, painting (top) promised gift)

Open House New York, 2012

07 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by in New York City

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This weekend was Open House New York. OHNY is an annual event in which cultural institutions across the five boroughs open up a portion of their facility that is normally closed to the public. It is a chance to see something you ordinarily would not. Many New Yorkers build a weekend around it, coordinating their plans to see as much as they can. Because it was rainy day and a long week I did not feel like venturing too far from the house today. So,  I headed to Greenwood Cemetery to see what could.

This is the Schermerhorn’s tomb and dates to 1847. One intriguing about Greenwood is that a huge chunk of the city’s history is on display for you right there. Around every corner you see a name familiar to you from a building, street, or avenue somewhere in Gotham.

The cemetery received  permission from descendants’ families to open the tombs to the public for this one-weekend-a-year event. About eight to ten crypts were open Saturday and Sunday, with different ones accessible each day.

I myself did not do the trolley, but for those with tickets there was transportation between stops.

Whether it’s at a cemetery or a Civil War battlefield, it’s when you get off the beaten path that you find those moments of peace.

 

Even with the rain there was a sizable turnout. One had to wait a few minutes at each stop to get in and out of the tombs. Here is the view from inside one. Many are surprisingly big, with the capacity to hold several dozen or even hundreds of extended family.

The rain added to the ambiance. I was glad I made it today and not yesterday when it was clear and sunny.

I made sure to visit the soldiers and sailors monument to Civil War veterans. I don’t always make it to this side of the cemetery during my regular constitutionals.

There are approximately 4,000 Civil War veterans resting in Greenwood.

It’s autumn in New York.

Spielberg in Gettysburg

04 Thursday Oct 2012

Posted by in Film, Sound, & Photography, Uncategorized

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We have been looking forward to Stephen Spielberg’s Lincoln biopic in our house for some time, not least because the Hayfoot has a thing for both Abe and Daniel Day-Lewis. Apparently the film has been sitting in the can for some time, since spring. From what I understand the director waited for a late November release because he did not want the film to influence the presidential election in any way. At first I though this was silly, but the more I thought about it the more it made sense. Intentionally or not–and it is too good a marketing angle to think it was not a factor the decision of when to release–a November opening also means that the film coincides with the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. This year Spielberg will be the keynote speaker at this year’s Dedication Day ceremony on November 19th.

(image/Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln)