Category: Reading Reflections

Thomas King let the heritage laws really have it in his book. The sad thing is that at the end of May I am going to attend Section 106 training in Seattle. Now I’m left with the question: what is the point? How will I be any different than the rest of the people that King rails against? Will I just be a client’s advocate for their projects, even if they will destroy significant historic buildings? I think I will be one of the well meaning ones, but will my actions just perpetuate the uselessness of the laws? Can new trainees introduced to Section 106 begin to change the status quo? I do think that if we can appeal to all conservatives and liberals alike, perhaps this is the time that the laws can be reformed to better protect our environment and our cultural landscapes. An appeal to private property rights and traditional ways of life might work to build support for this reform. And if it proves to save money, there would be more support. I was expecting that King would leave me with more enthusiasm and that change could happen to the laws, but I am about as discouraged as I was from the first chapter. My only comfort is to try and define how I will operate within the system, and to keep in mind what King has written. But isn’t that how we got where we are?

Like many of my classmates I too struggled with the acronym laden text. Despite this I enjoyed King’s organization of the text, using specific examples to explain the multitude of difficulties that face those attempting to preserve both natural and historic environments. This being said, like Anna, I would have REALLY liked at least one positive experience or example.

Something that struck me while reading was what seemed to be an immense lack of understanding when it comes to landscapes by government entities. I’ll admit that my knowledge of landscapes was limited before Everyday America at the beginning of the semester, but I would expect much more (perhaps foolishly) from programs and people whose job is to essentially preserve cultural and natural landscapes. The lack of knowledge on landscapes is quite frightening to me and makes me think more should be done to educate the populace on the importance of landscapes.

I thought King’s discussion on cumulative effects on the environment was especially well done. Many people are not conscious of what their actions can do to environment and the startling ramifications they can have.

Lastly, I couldn’t help but think that not all employees working in the bureaucracy are pleased with the procedures that are in place. As King writes on page 142 some professionals working in EIA or CRM are “just going to keep on keepin’ on” because as mentioned they could be flipping burgers. Even with all of King’s brimstone and fire, when it really comes down to it, I find myself in an ethical dilemma. When I get out of college and have to start paying off the student debt, I don’t know that I could resist a job even if it required me to sell my soul the black hole of bureaucracy. I mean is fighting the good fight worth a diet of Top Ramon? These are the type of questions that keep me up at night. And on those awful nights when I really start spinning out of control, I put on City High’s “What Would You Do?” and remember, life could be a whole lot worse.

 

Thomas King attempted to wrestle with a problem that is not limited to historical preservation laws. Many laws and even amendments are not fully enforced. The lack of public knowledge and complex and vague verbiage in the law are all problems with almost every law in the United States. Take for example the Civil Rights Act’s of the 1960’s, the general public is under the impression that these laws fixed racial inequality. It takes very little research to stumble on to the fact that class differences still exist. King argued the same thing. That most people believe there are laws put in place to protect their heritage, but once an organization attempts to use those laws, they find themselves unprotected. This does not take away from the fact the poor enforcement is of heritage laws is any less of problem, but his arguments are not new. His pointing fingers game at the Bush administration is childish. I believe by now everyone understands that Bush and republican congress are responsible for several bad decisions, even Idaho republicans are embarrassed about their reign of terror for eight years. However, pointing fingers does not really get results. King gives strong examples of why there are problems with the law and his resolutions are same resolutions that everyone provides for a broken laws. Public support, clarifying the laws, get presidential support, “tell the agencies to clean up their act” (his suggestions here are extremely complex taking away from the simple process), reworking the regulations, and change in law.[1] Great! Now how do we convince the government to do this? The people? Ok, how do you get the people involved? There has to be enough incentive for a majority of the public to be involved. For some it will be the cultural heritage that is being taken, but as King so bluntly states unless you have the money he can not help you. So how do we get the “ordinary” person involved? I honestly believe that to remedy several legal issues with the United States; more public involvement is needed, but the real issue comes down to how. How do we get the public involved? Will simplifying the laws make the public anymore willing to read them?  Overall the book had great points about the problems with the heritage laws, good examples to prove his points and justify his finger pointing at the Bush administration, but it was frustrating that these solutions to the problem of law are always impossible to implement. It would be nice to see these solutions working at a smaller level and how they were able to put them in operation before assuming these are the right answers.

I don’t think I have ever read a publication that used more acronims than Our Unprotected Heritage(OUH). This even includes the technical manuals I had to read while I was in the Navy. I’m not sure who Thomas F. King’s (TFK) audience is, but OUH seems to be pitched to a very small group of people who regularly deal with the Light Green Laws (LGL) he saturates OUH with. I personally believe that the Bright Green Laws (BGL) are much more important and should take fiscal and enforcement priority–if I had the choice between cutting the LGLs or the BGLs in the coming federal budget I could face the demise of the LGLs with a clean conscience. I found it humorous that TFK spends most of the book discussing how ineffective the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the National Historical Preservation Act (NHPA) are, only to suggest ways to correct them–on page 161-2–that would require legislation even more complex and unworkable than the already existing laws. A solution to the problem might lie in allowing more jurisdiction to loocal governments. I know of several local initiatives that have successfully impeded projects the community did not want to happen–Hammer Flats (HF), development of five mile and victory area (DFMVA), satelite towers in the same area (STSA). These might not all be cultural heritage related endeavors (CHRE)–which overall I don’t think are very important–but they do show that people can stand up to developers and businesses.

The Main Point (MP) that I gathered from This Week’s Reading (TWR) is how hopeless any attempt at historic/environmental/cultural preservation seems amid all of the red tape restricting such attempts. There are so many loopholes that federal agencies and private businesses can use to get out of being held to whatever wishy-washy standards the “light green laws” encourage that it seems like it would be almost impossible to win a case for preservation if you did not have a significant amount of money, time, and connections to help you out. (Even the Rosas, who must have had a fair amount of these resources to be able to take their fight as far as they did, gave up in the end.)

That being said, I wonder if there were no positive examples of cases that have been won by average citizens, or examples where federal agencies have acted admirably, that King could have illustrated. Like Luke, he used only negative examples, so I was left with an overwhelmingly pessimistic feeling by the end of the book. Thus, King’s suggestions in the last chapter for resolving the problem struck me as vague and fruitless. Sure, it would be great for Obama to be able to tell all federal agencies to “clean up their acts” and see instant compliance. However, the reality is that this would involve even more bureaucracy with the appointment of task forces to analyze cases further and “monitor performance,” more training for agencies, etc. I wish that King had left us with an example of a reason to hope, or at least with a more tangible way to challenge the system.

I was both amazed and appalled by the reply from the manager of the BVM museum.  I can’ t believe a professional would send back a letter filled with so much acrimony and contempt, not to mention the obvious ignorance of the facts.  When she said something about Greeks not getting into the whole slavery issue I about fell out of my chair!  As a Greek herself, she doesn’t know that the early history of her people is filled with slavery?  As a teacher myself, we sometimes have to teach difficult and sensitive subjects to our students.  You can teach those subjects in the correct manner where the students learn about it and learn from it.  You don’t just leave it out just because it might make some students uneasy.  The manager should have been thanking Mr. Cebula for helping correct the mistakes, instead of lashing out at him in a childlike manner.  Not professional at all.

“I won’t disallow the White Soul its pleasure in celebrating Jim Crow and the Confederacy. I can only hope that those who celebrate a centuries long tradition of treason, slavery, rape, exploitation, and death own the blood on their hands. Why? Because a person cannot truly celebrate a thing without taking ownership of all its aspects…good and bad alike.”

The above quote made me think about history events that we celebrate, which public historians are more than likely involved with. Like 100 yr building birthday bashes or the 75th celebration of a company.

Do we take ownership of the good and the bad when we do public history? Let’s just limit the discussion to the American West. I would say that in many cases we do not, but does that make it bad history? Do we not learn from it? I do not know the answers, but I thought I would ask. I have a hunch that we only select the history that appeals to us, and whoever our constituents might be.

First things first, I am a proud Eastern Eagle alumni on this Friday night. Larry Cebula (public historian at Eastern Washington University) did a truly fantastic job dealing with the mis-information presented at the Baron Von Munchausen Historic Home. He exemplified what it was to be a public historian by respectfully pointing out where the museums “facts” should be corrected. When working with the public it takes a certain tone and I believed he achieved it in his open letter.

As far as the response back from the curator…I had a mixed bag of reactions.

First, I thought to myself, “This is what I am signing up for. This is the reality of what I will be facing on the front lines of public history.”

Second, I came to the realization that this is exactly what I want to do. The curator’s response all but validated the need for fundamentally trained public historians. Cebula said it well in the comments section, “someday there will be a changing of guard” and as naive as it might seem I’m excited to be a part of it.

I anticipate in class that discussion on how the public can damage history will be addressed. I personally struggle with this. Yes, pseudo-history is simply disgraceful and should be smacked down WWE style. But as far as volunteerism and interpretation—I believe the public should be there, helping out, being active. You can’t simply say history is for historians. That’s like saying “seats taken” to Forrest Gump on the school bus. But on the other side of the coin, is no interpretation better than bad or or just plain wrong interpretation? I guess I will have to continue to work out my public history philosophy.

To conclude this overly verbose post, I’ll make my pithy comment on the Virginia textbook. Lauriann is correct, there is a serious issue with peer-review and even more so with people failing to do their jobs. As historically flawed as Masoff is, unfortunately, she can write whatever she so chooses…I mean she is “fairly respected.”[1] The fact that his book passed through boards and committees is just embarrassing.

 

After I read the article about the 4^th grade Virginia textbook, I thought that Joy Masoff should not be writing any books, especially history books.  She is not a trained historian, and should not be writing textbooks for schools.  In the article, she even admits that her statement/sentence about thousands of black Confederate soldiers was based on information she found on the internet.  It is obvious she needs training as to how to conduct research, and write textbooks.  The review board should have also done a better job evaluating her textbook.  This is why parent involvement is so important, because an actual historian and parent, Carol Sheriff noticed the sentence in her daughter’s textbook and had a problem with it as a parent and as a historian.

The problem with the docents at the Baron Von Munchausen House, is likely they did not receive adequate training.  It could be that someone else told them that the myths were true so they are just repeating what they have learned.  Here too is an excellent reason to do your own research before you go on a tour of a historic home/site.  The docents should also be conducting their own research and educating themselves.  Just because someone is a docent, or wrote a history textbook does not mean they are being historically accurate.  The fact that Historian Larry Cebula heard several myths reported by the docent, and calling slaves “servants” is not being accurate and is downright wrong; the site definitely needs to focus on correcting and improving upon their interpretation of history, and training their docents to be historically accurate.

The response of the curator I find rather comical.  Maybe the curator forgot to take her “meds” that day.  I especially found it ridiculous that they omitted slavery due to some kids teasing others.  To change history, or omit facts so as not to make someone feel uncomfortable is not what a historic institution should do.  Obviously some of the teachers need to educate their students before the tour as to how to behave.

After reading the article about Earl Taylor, it just reinforces again that when you want others to follow your political agenda, people are willing to change or omit real events of the past to suit their agenda.  The fact that Taylor said that Jefferson’s slaves wouldn’t want to leave Monticello is ridiculous.  Of course they would want their freedom.  During Taylor’s workshops, he just omits past events as if they didn’t exist, and reports on portions that fit in with his philosophy or agenda.  Obviously, he is not being historically accurate.  I don’t agree with information being changed or omitted to fit with a political agenda.  Yes, it is an ethical dilemma….

 

Here is an interesting site I found, not related to this week’s topic.  This site has several photos of historic Boise

http://www.oldboise.com/gallery_then.html

After grading 85 essays over Spring Break about the issue of bias in representations of slavery, it was all I could do to read more about it. However, as the article on the “Founding Fathers” class illustrates, this is such a relevant issue today with the rise of the Tea Party, etc. that it is hard to escape.

The “They Have Blood on Their Hands” post would have received a B from me for some unnecessarily inflammatory editorializing, but it did raise an important point about how the “pro-South” advocates make slavery out to be a minor issue when discussing the Civil War and its memory. My students were assigned to read a web page run by the Sons of Confederate Veterans in order to write their essays, and I was surprised that many of them did not seem to question the source’s bias at all (to re-emphasize last week’s point about how easy “lying about the past” is, especially on the web). I agree with LauriAnn that peer review is crucial to the accuracy of the text and integrity of the author. However, when the general public does not place a high value on the integrity of the source (it was a professor who discovered the error in the textbook), it is hard to see how more peer review will solve the greater issue at hand.

Another obstacle to promoting general historical literacy is the lack of resources that those with scholarly integrity are equipped with to pursue this goal. One of the comments to the Munchausen blog post noted that museum interpreters are often volunteers, and historic sites can not always afford to hire experts in the field. The power of public history is that it puts historical interpretation into the hands of the public; this can be either an asset or a detriment to the study of history.