I was particularly intrigued by the idea of “landscape as palimpsest” outlined in the “Augmenting Archaeology” blog entry. However (and maybe I took it the wrong way), the blog’s author seemed to make light of how historians go about reading landscapes as palimpsests, suggesting that “playing” landscapes would help tell a better story of the history of the landscape than merely “reading some aspect of past activity in the landscape.”
Telling stories about the history of landscapes is what historians do already as landscape readers—whether it be through analysis of geographical landscapes, architectural landscapes, or even intellectual “landscapes.” Good historians are constantly “annotating and crafting competing visions” of these landscapes, and rarely stop at stating pure facts as the author seems to imply. The art of history is interpretation—analyzing not just how, but why, physical or intellectual/cultural changes have occurred from past to present—and I think the profession is pursuing this purpose successfully.
That said, there is no reason why interpreting (or “playing”) landscapes could not be done through games as well as scholarship, and augmented reality is a compelling way to do this. The whole “Play the Past” concept and blog reminded me of my childhood forays into the Oregon Trail computer game, which was perhaps the inception of my interest in American western history. While my ten-year-old self probably focused primarily on trying to get my oxen to survive perilous river fordings, I do recall being able to empathize with the plights of the pioneers and learning—albeit superficially—about the landscapes of the nineteenth-century American west.
One of the most fabulous history projects currently existing is the Basque interpretive sign project that was recently completed in downtown Boise last summer. This project interpreted the significance of buildings and sites important in Idaho Basque history. It created interpretive signs as permanent exhibits at three locations: the former Church of the Good Shepherd (422 West Idaho Street) founded in 1919 and the only Basque Church in the United States; the former Star Rooming House (512 West Idaho) one of the first and best preserved Basque boardinghouses in Idaho; and the Basque Mural (hangs on the west, side wall of the Anduiza Fronton 619 Grove) which depicts key elements of Basque history and culture both in the Basque Country and here in Idaho. These three sites developed and extended a walking tour of historical Basque sites on the Basque Block in Boise.
The projects intended audience is the Treasure Valley community and visitors to the area. The completed project coincided with Jaialdi 2010, an international Basque festival held every five years in Boise which draws 30,000 participants from all over the United States and the world.
The central goal of the project was to create three interpretive signs to educate the public about significant buildings and events that are part of Idaho’s history and incorporate them into a walking tour. The three signs contain a historical narrative of the site’s history and its importance for the Idaho Basque community. Photographs were utilized to interpret the sites history and importance. The project was a continuation of an already existing group of interpretive signs and could be further enlarged to include other sites of historical significance for the Basques.
This local history project serves as a case study of the tension that often surrounds immigrant groups. The Basque ethnic enclave served as a buffer for Basques as they made their way into American culture. The boardinghouse allowed Basques to be together, eat familiar food, sing and dance yet it also was only a temporary home until they settled in more permanent homes in neighborhoods throughout the Treasure Valley. The Church of the Good Shepherd was built with funds and labor of the Basque community yet served as their church for only a brief period. After less than a decade, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Boise closed the church as a Basque chapel and encouraged them to attend services elsewhere. American national church pressures of the period made Catholic prelates emphasize the loyalty of their followers to America and not to their countries of origin and accompanying Roman influence. Finally, the mural depicts key aspects of Basque history and culture that are more commonly subsumed under the Spanish and/or French stories. These signs explain some of the tension that surrounded Basque assimilation into Idaho and may also serve as reminders for the process underway for other current immigrant groups.
This fabulous public history project was the brain child of BSUs own Dr. John Bieter, and he was assisted in the research, grant-writing, and other administrative duties by a graduate student at BSU named Luke Schleif.
For decades, scholars and non-academics alike have been trying to bring history to the public through television. Obscure documentaries are shown frequently on PBS stations across the country, while those who consider themselves “too cool” for PBS can choose to indulge their history cravings from the more mainstream menu of the History Channel. The demographic to which stations like PBS and the History Channel cater, however, is still not as vast as it could be; these channels require a television-owning audience, for example (and cable-subscribing in the case of the History Channel), and their reputation is still largely one of nerdiness. A more truly “public” way of promoting history through video and documentary should allow viewers to watch via a convenient mode without the attachment of the “history nerd” stigma.
Cue Derek Waters, a young actor and producer who happens to have a passion for history in addition to filmmaking. In 2007, Waters decided to combine his love of history with his love of drinking, and began filming his friends discussing topics in history–while drunk. The experiment subsequently evolved into Drunk History, a series of short films narrating historical events that originated as web videos and are now appearing on HBO.
Drunk History is a genuinely vernacular form of public history that appeals to a younger audience who, though perhaps interested in history, is not necessarily inclined to watch a lengthy, cerebral documentary. Anyone with an internet connection and five minutes to spare can access these videos, which feature drunk but enthusiastically knowledgeable narrators describing historical events that are simultaneously interpreted by well-known actors such as Jack Black and Don Cheadle. The fact that famous actors—and drinking—are involved is sure to attract a wide audience who would be indifferent to less of a popular approach to history. (There is certainly no “nerdy” stigma attached to watching this type of historical interpretation.) Moreover, the language employed is casual, to say the least, and as far from convoluted academic jargon as it could be.
While the historical facts included in the videos may not be the most detailed or, in some cases, even completely accurate, the videos serve as inspiration for further research into the event or topic narrated. More importantly, they make history—and the process of retelling it—appear trendy, which seems to be Waters’ objective in producing the videos.
The public itself is not involved in the project (although ordinary people with passion for history are the ones who narrate the videos). However, the idea has spawned various imitations on YouTube, and will no doubt continue to do so as it gains popularity. While historians may balk at the idea of conveying inebriated interpretations of important historical events, the use of accessible internet videos could surely be an asset to public historians aspiring to provoke widespread interest in history. Even without the drunken aspect, the short, entertaining film approach could be adapted for museums, mobile walking tours, or publicity purposes. It may not always be possible to achieve, but having a notable celebrity appear in a video advertising some important historical event or aspect of your city would be fantastic publicity to elicit widespread public interest. Who wouldn’t want to watch Jack Black dressed as a Basque sheepherder recounting Boise history?
One of the chapters I found interesting was chapter 16 and how Latinos in East Los Angeles utilized their porches and front yards as extensions to their homes as outdoor living spaces. Parents sat on chairs or couches on the front porch while kids played on the grass, or played ball in the street. The fence or street in front of the house was also used to sell handcrafted items, or display items for a yard sale. Regardless of race, I’m sure all of us have used our outdoor spaces in some way that chapter 16 described.
I also thought, chapter 16 could be expanded into another book or text about how different ethnic groups or cultures live and use their homes. This could also be done based on socioeconomic status, environmental factors, and a variety of other topics. I also thought about my community I grew up in Hacienda Heights in southern California. My community was predominately Chinese, and I learned a great deal about Chinese culture. Many of my Chinese neighbors had Koi ponds in their front yards, and when I was younger I would help them feed their fish. Some of my neighbors also had traditional Chinese gardens with ornate bridges and pathways.
In Chinese households, Feng Shui is very important and there are many rules that should be followed in order to have a harmonious life that balances: health, wealth, and happiness. Some areas of importance include; the direction of your front door, the direction your house faces, the importance of colors, and Feng Shui symbols. The 5 elements are also important to include: water, wood, fire, earth and metal. It’s all about having the right balance of chi which will make your home and your life harmonious. It is also important to live near a Buddhist temple, when possible, and in Hacienda Heights we had one of the largest temples in the state. The closer your residence was to the temple the better, because if you lived within 1 mile, then you live on holy land.
In Hacienda Heights, there is a very large Buddhist temple, HSI Lai Temple. I tried to include a picture, but it didn’t work for some reason…
I’ve visited the temple about 3 times, and there are several gardens, and temples in which to pray. There is also a 20 foot Buddha statute in one of the temples. Many of my classmates and friends taught me about Chinese holidays, religious ceremonies and how to speak a few words in Mandarin. So my community was more about fried rice rather than the “corn lady” in East L.A.
In perusing the depths of the App Store, I’ve found some awesome apps (for free!)
The American Museum of Natural History has a few apps, but one of them is the “explorer“.. it gives guided tours, exhibit searches, restaurant and restroom locations for the museum.. It has a GPS location feature that gives you directions to the exhibit that you select (or is next on the guided tour you select).. Pictures and info of the exhibit are in the App as well!
The American Museum of Natural History also has an app dedicated to their Dinosaur, and Cosmic exhibits as well… Excellent guide for a museum!
Next up, is a pretty cool public App for the Boise tourist.. The description credits the Boise Weekly for it, but it’s called “CC: BOI” (Cocktail Compass Boise)… it shows all happy hour and food specials, as well as a countdown for when they end… Hours of the establishment, a brief description, as well as a Boise Weekly review of the bar/restaurant.. You can give your own reviews, read other readers reviews, as well as see it on a map, share it on a social networking site, or call the place (obviously for the iPhone only).
These are definitely worth a free download, and correlate to the ones we’re thinking up as well!
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What apps are you finding? Leave their names (and links!) here in the comments, or create a new blog post to share them.
(To get the link for an app, right-click (or, on a Mac with a one-button mouse, control-click) on its name in the App Store, then select “copy link.”)
I did not own a car when I first moved to Boise in 2001. Every aspect of my life was limited by the reality of the automobile landscape. Where I lived, where I shopped, where I worked, and where I played were all necessarily accessible by foot, by bicycle, or by public transportation (unfortunately, the bicycle was for the most part the most efficient means of travel, depending on how far I needed to go, and what I needed to carry with me). These limitations were my immediate motivations for acquiring a vehicle, any vehicle I could get my hands on, in the attempt to broaden my horizons so to speak.
Buying a vehicle did not lessen my concern for the problem of alternative transportation, however. Even now, as party to a two-car household, I lament the poor state of Boise’s public transportation. I live no more than four miles from campus and yet I drive to class, I drive to the library, and sometimes I even pay for parking (ugh!). Why? Because it is far more convenient than leaving twenty minutes earlier, braving the elements, or the bus. But after reading the chapter on “auto-vernacular” I am even more aware of the bigger impact of a “perceived diminished sense of community” that the automobile has almost invisibly set upon us.
Ironically, my community has been limited by my mobility. I can drive all over town, running errands and completing chores. In a sense, my community is piecemeal. I interact and know my immediate neighbors, but not many beyond my property boundaries. I am limited to artificial associations with my bank tellers, grocery checkers, waitresses, and because of my own occupation, my customers. Is the vehicle responsible for the superficiality of my daily interactions? Hardly. But it does contribute, no doubt, to my approach to such daily interactions. Will public transportation fix this superficiality? Doubtful. Maybe we should focus on bringing our community goods and services closer to our actual living spaces? I wonder if that would re-build a community network of shared interests and relationships. It couldn’t hurt.
I wish that my life resembled James Rojas’ description of his neighborhood with “front yards [that] are not anonymous spaces upholding a single community identity, but rather exuberant vignettes of the individual owner’s lives” (281). However, I realized that I do not have a lot of firsthand experience with front porches that reveal, rather than conceal the personality of those that live their or neighborly chats over the fence.
Unfortunately chapter seventeen better reflected my life this weekend. I spent Friday night and all Saturday in class while my husband and children were away for the weekend. Without anyone to cook for me or to cook for I decided to indulge in my two favorite things of late: McDonald’s Maple and Fruit Oatmeal and Starbucks’ Salted Chocolate Hot Chocolate for dinner on a lonely Saturday night. Yes, I went to TWO drive-thrus in one twenty minute excursion. Pathetic. I realized how entrenched the drive-in/drive-thru culture is, especially in Boise where city planners anticipated widespread car use. As J. B. Jackson argued, I am a “mobile consumer” who would “think nothing of traveling to a supermarket that has better parking than one located two miles nearer” (297). This chapter on mini-malls really expressed the power of landscape to make changes in our culture. Seeing the progression of house-call making doctors to the variety that allow you to get a strep culture and make copies at Kinko’s on your lunch break really revealed to me how a profession like medicine that used to dwell in impressive and large office buildings, aloof from potential patients, dropped to a mini-mall where high school kids with no formal training can be working at the store next door. This point especially hit me when contrasted with Rojas’ East L.A. neighborhood where the landscape fostered positive development with personality and the feel of community.
Next weekend I will install a lawn ornament (I am leaning toward blue and orange flamingos that I hope will communicate my intense school spirit and love of environmental history) instead of the hitting up the drive-thru.
I guess when you read something, the more you feel a personal connection to it or can relate a memory to it, the more you enjoy reading it and the more you remember what you read! In Chapter 6 JB Jackson discusses how monuments affect the landscape and change your views of the town or city you are visiting. This chapter reminded me a lot of Washington D.C. As a state legislator, I was fortunate to be on a task force that met back in Washington D.C. every spring so I was able to walk among many of those monuments that dominate that city. As I studied these monuments and read the information supplied, I was filled with a sense of historal awe of this capital city of ours. After reading JB Jackson, I started wondering what if those monuements weren’t there in D.C.? It made me realize how drastically those monuments changed my perception of the city.
Another section in this weeks readings was in chapter 13 with the concept of private property affecting the landscape. This really hit home for me for a number of reasons. First of all, having lived all my life in this setting and being an avid outdoorsman I have seen thousands of these signs he described. Second of all, my family has a private ranch surrounded by national forest that we (especially my Dad!) guard ferociously. My dad has crudely lettered “no hunting” and “stay out” signs posted in several locations giving visitors an ominous feeling as they pull up to our place. My favorite though was a sign up in Alaska that said “If you saw the movie Deliverance you will know not to trespass on our property.” I think JB would have loved that one as well!
As a first time blogger, I’m not sure what I’m doing but I’ll give it a shot. I missed the deadline on this blog but I thought I’d follow through with this anyway. In the readings for last week JB Jackson talks a lot about the the roadside landscape as well as the small town rural landscape, both of which I could personally relate to. Born and raised in small town Idaho along US 95, I’ve spent my whole life going up and down that highway, in and out of the small towns that appear every 20-30 minutes as you drive. Every town is the same and every town is different. Each is unique in it’s own way too. As you pass the many old homesteads that make up all the farms and ranches between these small towns you see what I call the “real” Idaho and every broken down tractor, barking dog and old barn along the highway make me feel like I’m home.
This is a picture of a water irrigation pump, powered by a lawn mower engine. It came to mind while reading “Private Property and the Ecological: Commons in the American West.” This particular pump has been a part of the landscape in my parents’ home since I was young. This fixture in my backyard was a social “norm” in my area of town. The whole section of town I grew up in either had a ditch running through the backyard or water hole where the irrigated water would show up once or twice a week. The pump related to the chapters for this week in varying ways. The most obvious was the water laws in southern Idaho. Most people had lawn mower water pumps to move the water from the backyard to water their entire lawns. Every year on the corner of Hawthorne and Quinn streets a sign popped up in the spring announcing the “mandatory” water meeting that decided where and when the water would be available for people to use on their property. The term “mandatory” was used loosely. It meant if you had an opinion of when you should receive water each week and what time of day you should attend. Mainly people who had horse pastures or large vegetable garden would attend the meeting. The rest like my parents would receive a letter advising when to expect water each week and bill for the summer dues. It mirrors Mark Fiege’s analysis on a smaller level; a community of neighbors sharing water in the summer for use on their private property. This service was provided at a small fee compared to city water prices. Just like the private property signs of the west, these water pumps demonstrate the history of water use in Idaho within the city.
The water pump would remain an unimportant fixture in my memory, like Californian bungalows, had I not previously read Peirce Lewis’ chapter on how to read cultural landscapes. If you were to ask me if I “liked” the water pump, I would have answered no. I think it is hideous and reminds me what a chore moving the water was. Ask the questions the Lewis suggestions on page 93, “What is that? Why does it look that way it does? How does it work? Why is it there?” These questions make the pump much more interesting. It is a water pump sitting on an old lawn mower stand because it is using the lawn mower engine. It is still a mystery to me how the thing works, because it breaks every summer. To answer the question why it is there can range from a simple answer of; to water our lawn or, as in depth, to explain private property laws bending to the communal water use. The vocabulary about its history was explained by Fiege and what little I knew of water meetings.
A last connection is to the “The Enacted Environment.” (I did not make a connection to Medicine in the (Mini) Mall. I found the article fascinating, but it did not peak my interest like the other articles.) David C. Sloanes explanation of front yard evolution is similar to the evolution of the landscape in the neighborhood I grew up in. The land on the west side of Pocatello was all farm land bought in the 1940’s and turned into a housing development. In is a couple blocks of little rectangle houses on a fourth of an acre lots. They used the same water irrigation that farms used for the houses now. Therefore, irrigation used to water crops now waters lawns for a whole neighborhood.
