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"Thanks to you, my son wrote and illustrated a comic book on the Civil War. On the last page he referenced your graphic novels." Laura, mother of a 9-year-old |
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Posts Tagged ‘history’
Book Review: Measuring America by Andro Linklater
Written on Monday, August 11th, 2008 [permanent link]
I just spent a week in the Blue Ridge Mountains at Boy Scout camp with my youngest son, Truman, and while he was off practicing first aid and woodcarving I got to sit under the cool shade trees and read! (Yes, yes, I also recertified in Red Cross CPR and kept a watch on all the Scouts, but the chance to sit and read quietly away from any computer or deadline was a real treat!)
One of the books I read was this study of how measuring expressed populism, economics and democracy — a book that sounds horribly dull until you start reading it. This was a mirror image of Dava Sobel’s popular “Longitude” book from 1996 — but better. Linklater told me things about Jefferson I didn’t know and wrapped politics and big ideas and economics into the simple act of surveying land. (This book gives you a great feel for how the young George Washington surveyor image connects with the old George Washington land speculator.) I was taught in college all about Jefferson’s belief that a nation of small farmers would preserve our virtue and our democracy, but this narrative connected all that to my gradeschool lessons about the metric system in the 1970s! And I’m from Ohio, so Linklater’s opening passage that set the action in the Northwest Territory was particularly fun. And he never forgets the Native Americans who inhabited the land before the settlers started marking the trees and claiming the streams, so he keeps the book from shrinking into just European intellectual history. (Don’t worry – the ideas are big, but the many illustrations help the story speak in a language that a modern reader understands.)
The only trouble is: Linklater gets at least one big, basic fact wrong, and that calls me to question every single absorbing detail he offers in the book. This English author tells us in two separate passages that Jamestown was founded in 1609. No. It was 1607. What else so basic did he miss?
(His story is further hampered by the book jacket, which sets the expectation that this will be about “How the United States Was Shaped By the Greatest Land Sale in History,” which caused me and friends to expect something about the Louisiana Purchase. But Linklater is not talking about the greatest land sale, he’s talking about the greatest land SURVEY, which converted America’s vast public lands into private property. It’s not one sale, it’s millions and millions of sales in individuals. That’s not Linklater’s fault but the marketer’s.)
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Tags: Bentley Boyd, Chester the Crab, comics, history, Measuring America, metric system, Thomas Jefferson
Posted in History Book Review | No Comments »
Colonial Williamsburg Teacher Institute groupie
Written on Sunday, July 27th, 2008 [permanent link]
Finally, after four days of me trailing after them from Jamestown to the slave cabin at Colonial Williamsburg to the taverns to the costume shop, one of the teachers said, “Honestly, who would follow after a bunch of social studies teachers?!”
Me. I’m a hardcore groupie! I love hanging with those who think it’s important to teach the next generation about the highpoints and problems and vital choices of our past. I think it will affect our future.
I’ve worked with Colonial Williamsburg staffers in many ways since I moved here in 1992, but it was still a welcome surprise when CW invited me to spend a week shadowing one session of their summer Teacher Institute. For almost two decades, CW has given master teachers a chance to renew their knowledge of Colonial times and pick up new tricks for making history vital. They bring in about 600 every year from across the country, many of them paid for by donors in their home state. I jumped at the chance.
I did learn some new things myself and corrected some misconceptions that had creeped in to my own knowledge base. But mostly it was just fun to see these folks from Texas and California and Wisconsin and Washington play around the Historic Triangle — they acted like it was history teacher Disneyland. One woman had spent time in Virginia as a girl in segregated days and was happy to see the story of slavery portrayed so well at Jamestown, Yorktown and Williamsburg. One woman had worked summer school in her Florida district so she could pay for this and make it a vacation with her daughter, who also teaches. Many had never been to Colonial Williamsburg and were awestruck at the detail this place offers. At the end of the week one young teacher said, “I can’t WAIT to get back and NOT use my textbook!”
What can I say, I’m a history geek. Yes, yes, it’s good business for me to hang with them — these 29 teachers found my comix in the various gift shops around town and went nuts for them, but that’s not why I did this. My interest in education and history and kids is so strong that the transition between all the hats I now wear feels seamless to me. Often during the week I would pivot in an instant from being student to being a teacher of history. But it’s ALL advocacy!
Send me a message or post to this note if you’d like more details on what I saw and did with the Teacher Institute! You can also find official info on CW’s website: www.history.org/history/teaching/tchsti.cfm
Tags: Bentley Boyd, Chester the Crab, Colonial Williamsburg, comics, history, Jamestown, social studies, teachers
Posted in History Teacher | 4 Comments »
Fact-finding mission on City Island
Written on Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 [permanent link]
On a recent Friday night between two long days at a homeschool convention in Harrisburg, PA, I went looking for fun on the capital city’s designated fun island in the middle of the Susquehanna River. I found a lot of History! And one awesome punchline. . .
This cool Friday dusk would have felt completely different if the AA Harrisburg Senators had been playing a home game instead of away. I was sad to occupy the island with a few joggers and the ghosts of players in the Negro Leagues of baseball. One team there was called the Harrisburg Colored Giants. The Giants played 1906-1908, but on a deserted City Island it was hard to judge which team was more a part of faded history, the Giants or the Central Penn Piranha (a nearby sign proclaimed them “The Winningest Team in Minor League Football History!”)
The joggers crossed a pedestrian-only bridge from the island to downtown Harrisburg. The sign proclaims it “The Oldest Metal Span Bridge in the U.S. 1888.” I have no idea what engineering made this bridge possible or special, but I love finding that detail of History. That sort of claim doesn’t often show up on Google — you’ve got to walk a place to find that.
Before air conditioners, this island was where city folks came to cool off in July and August. A cement beach sits on the north end of City Island. They still use the bathhouse built for the beach in the 1920s! The peeling paint added to the spooky atmosphere as the sun set and the security guard looked happy to be leaving his own hut on the fun island.
The city’s website says the island’s “RiverSide Village Park features seven rustic concession stands offering roast beef and fish sandwiches, crab cakes, sausages, hamburgers & hotdogs to french fries, lemonade, & ice cream.” I loved the idea of wrapping all this in a historical tone – I just wished I could have gotten some eats from the convincing replica of the John Harris Trading Post, 1705-1785.
. . . and then I walked behind the trading post! And saw a different kind of post!!! This great log cabin replica got carted in on a mobile home trailer and parked there 20 years ago, and they still haven’t bothered to cover up the trailer hitch!! Or maybe that’s just the place where the ashes from the chimney come out??? The view you don’t get on the postcard. 😉
Tags: Bentley Boyd, Chester the Crab, City Island, comix, Harrisburg, history, John Harris Trading Post, Negro League
Posted in Historical Travel | No Comments »
