"Thanks for the info on your blog, but . . ."

Well, you cannot please everyone! From the morning electronic mailbox comes this missive:

Dr. Cebula: 

I found the "Patrick Henry Said What?" entry on your blog while searching for the origin of the attributed Patrick Henry quote about the Constitution not being an instrument. Thank you for exposing the error of this attribution. I teach AP U.S. History, and I am always on the lookout for information exposing erroneous historical claims. 

The food was terrible and
the portions too small.

But I wonder about your hit-and-run attack on the Tea Party. What is the reason for that? Are Tea Party members unique or even unusual in misquoting (and misspelling, ah, that was a nice touch!) the Founders, Framers, et. al.? I think that they are not, any more than those who assert that the Constitution contains the phrase "separation of church and state" in an effort to rebut religious objections to abortion, or the congressman who referred to the "Good and Plenty Clause" of the Constitution to--if I remember correctly--justify ObamaCare. Seems like a cheap shot to to me. 

Maybe you fallen victim to some cultural/geographical snobbery too, although why anyone teaching in Cheney, Washington, population 10,590, would feel superior by reason of location is beyond me. (Perhaps there are cultural wonders in Spokane of which I am unaware.) But, in your "No, You Cannot be a Professor" entry, you note that it's not worth pursuing a history Ph.D., because any professorships would only be available "in some part of the country usually only seen on American Pickers [sic]." Another cheap shot? 

I certainly am not urging you to suppress your political or cultural thoughts or biases. But I think that it would be more honest of you to just do an open and fully developed hit piece on grass-roots conservative political movements, or on the cultural shortcomings of "flyover country," rather than to take snarky little shots in the course of discussing other subjects. 

Sincerely, 

John D. Unimpressed 
Major, U.S. Army, Ret. 
Somewhere, Oklahoma

John, for all I know you may be correct. Certainly with as few readers as I have for this blog, I should not risk alienating any. Let me explain where I was coming from when I wrote those bits.

Wrong on two levels

The Patrick Henry post was aiming for bigger game than debunking a spurious quote from one Founder, the idea was to set out a procedure for fact-checking internet quotes. Near the end of the piece I wrote that "I could have performed this exercise with hundreds of other "quotes" from the Founders that you see plastered on bumper stickers and misspelled on Tea Party signs," my only mention of that grass-roots Koch brothers run political
group. Col. Unimpressed protests that the Tea Partiers are not "unique or even unusual in misquoting ... the Founders."

Actually, they are. In fact there is a whole, award-winning book by Jill Lepore devoted to the Tea Party misinterpretation of the American Revolution. Or just Google about for Tea Party "quotes" pages and fact check them. Here is the first one I found. I checked the first five--four of them are made up.

I have never in my life heard anyone claim that the Constitution contained the phrase "separation of church and state" (though it certainly does establish that principle, and the phrase is an actual quote from Jefferson) or a "Good and Plenty clause." The left has its wackaloons, to be sure, but fabricating "quotes" from the Founders is a right-wing phenomena.

Founders edition

As for the other charge, of elitism and snobbery against the heartland, I don't think that is particularly valid. My post discouraging students to try to become history professors was not to save them from the imagined indignity of living in the Midwest, a place I happily called home for a dozen years while teaching at Missouri Southern State University in Joplin. I pointed out that there are no jobs, that a PhD can take ten years, that there are enormous opportunity costs in starting your career a decade after your peers, that a PhD in history can leave a person prepared to do little outside of academia, and that the pay for professors is terrible.

I also wanted to point out that having any chance at all for a tenure track job necessitates being willing to take a job anywhere at all. So I wrapped up my arguments with this line:

"Frankie! Seen a tenure-track job in here?"

"If you go on for a PhD, instead you will find yourself with student loan payments equivalent of a home mortgage but no home (and no equity), no retirement savings, and banking on the thin chance of landing a job in some part of the country usually seen on
American Pickers."

Dear Readers, I submit that a piece of writing as fine as that requires no further defense.

Misquoting Jesus in Spokane

Big local event coming up! EWU and the Daniel and Margaret Carper Foundation are bringing Bart Ehrman to town to give a history talk: Misquoting Jesus:Discrepancies in Christian scripture. Ehrman teaches Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, is the author of 20 books about the Bible, and is one of the top New Testament scholars in the world. He is a big deal, and a very engaging and witty speaker. YouTube is full of the guy.

The event is at 6:30 p.m., Thursday, May 23, 2013 at the Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox, Downtown Spokane, Wash.. And it is free! See you there.

Olmsted Online

Well, look at what a pretty thing this is!

Olmstead Online is an archive of plans and projects of the Olmstead firm across the United States. The Olmsteads were the most prominent landscape design firm of the late-19th and early-20th century America. The project is in its initial phase and the only state with a rich set of content is Washington. A FAQ page tells visitos that "received a grant from the federal Transportation Enhancement Program with a pilot to digitize plans and maps of the Olmsted-designed landscapes in Washington State." Lucky us! The interactive map of Washington State shows that most of the firm's work was Spokane or the Puget Sound region, with a scattering of projects in other corners of the state:

Zooming in on individual sites reveals shows us what is under the hood at Olmstead Online. The data set for Cannon Hill Park, an Olmstead park a few blocks from my house, lists 13 files including contour maps and sketches for buildings--but the only files online as yet are two planting plans. They are pretty neat:

Most of the Washington Olmstead sites are like this--a couple of interesting images but far more intriguing image descriptions that have not yet been uploaded. The site reminds us that for all of the Olmstead's fame as park builders, a huge amount of their firm's business was landscaping the grounds of private residences. Look at the details on this preliminary grounds plan for the mansion of H. W. Cowles in Browne's Addition:

This is a project in the early stages and the gaps are quite visible. Some of the locations on the map contain no images at all. Search features are wonky. The non-interactive timeline add little to the site. And there is very little information about the project itself. How did they choose which images to put online? Are more images on the way or is this it? What about the other states? Still, Olmstead Online is a compelling resource.

Damn Hippies

Posted without comment, a 1970 letter to Seattle mayor Wes Uhlman:

This is taken from the Vintage Seattle Facebook page, which credits the image courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives, Record Series 5287-02.

The Digital Public Library of America's View of the West

Last month saw the launch of what may become the digital repository for American history--the Digital Public Library of America. Aiming to unite "the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world," the DPLA has correctly been called the latest chapter in the dream of a universal library. So let's check it out.

The DPLA is headed up by Dan Cohen, former Director of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University and clearly the right man for the job. There is a Board of Directors of impressive individuals from various elite east cost institutions. The DPLA is starting up with a sack full of grant money and some high-profile content partners such as the Smithsonian.

Though there are a raft of articles about the launch of the DPLA, I would recommend this episode of the Digital Campus podcast, which is devoted to the DPLA. Cohen is one of the hosts of this long-running podcast, and this special episode has Cohen discussing at great length the goals of the project, concerns about its potential impact on other public libraries, decisions made about the interface and search abilities, and an API for developers. I do not see a counter on the DPLA site to tell us how many items are currently available, but in the podcast Cohen explains that the site will launch with millions of objects, and quickly ramp up to tens of millions. Let's see what they have!

A search for Spokane brings up 491 results. Fortunately the tools for refining a search are robust--on can refine by file type (text, image, sound, moving image), by date, by language, by owning institution or partner, by location and by subject. Really the site design is superb--the DPLA is simple, intuitive, and works as well on a smartphone or tablet as on a laptop. Drilling down through my results I caught sight of a cool 1956 tourists guide to Spokane. What you can do with items at the DPLA depends on the hosting partner--most of the search results at the DPLA take you away from the site to the partner's website. At the Ramsey collection, images can be magnified and explored with a slick interface, downloaded in a variety of resolutions and formats, and even embedded:



So what else can we discover about our far-from-Harvard corner of the world at the DPLA? The results are a bit of what the English call "a dog's breakfast," a mix of uneven content. The results reflect the collections of the largely east-coast content partners. So we find gorgeously-digitized botanical specimens collected along the Spokane River in the 1890s and now housed at the Smithsonian, quite a few cultural objects from the Spokane tribe also from the Smithsonian, some fascinating printed volumes that I had not seen before from various sources, odds and ends of government reports, scattered photographs from different archives, and even an MP3 of the call of a ruddy duck.  I love this 1878 photo of the Spokane River near Fort Spokane. This part of the river is long-since flooded by the hydroelectric dams:

So already a month after launch the DPLA has significant content for our neck of the woods. It would seem churlish to complain. The content though is of certain particular types, reflecting the DPLA partnerships so far. Government reports, surveys and tourists guides, biological and ethnological collections from 19th-century Smithsonian looters explorers, nearly everything about Spokane is from someone who had no connection with the place except to have visited. The whole enterprise reminds me just a little of the classic New Yorker cover, The World As Seen From New York's 9th Avenue:

I jest--the vision of the DPLA is not so myopic. And there are a few western partners, including the Mountain West Digital Library and---well actually they are it so far. This worthy project is at an early stage, of course there are holes. I do hope however that the DPLA staff recognizes the problem, and is actively seeking partners all around the country. There are a tremendous number of digital history projects out past the Hudson, many featured over the years at this blog. I even work at one of them.

Dan, give me a call.

Short Video on the Internet Archive

I am a huge fan of the Internet Archive--often referred to by its URL, Archive.org. The Internet Archive is a non-profit dedicated to "universal access to all knowledge." They have a dizzying array of audio and video recordings, an ebook interface that is far superior to that of Google Books, and a "Wayback Machine" that allows you to view webpages that have since been deleted. This brief video highlight some of their work--and their elegant server farm. Enjoy:  
Internet Archive from Deepspeed media on Vimeo.

Spokane Historical's Guide to Dropping Out of the Bloomsday Race

Bloomsday, Spokane's annual 12k run, is this Sunday. About 40,000 close friends will converge on Spokane to race on a beautiful course that will include such Spokane wonders as Riverfront Park, views of the falls, the Peaceful Valley neighborhood, and Riverside State Park. And along the way they will pass a lot of important historical sites.

If you are one of the thousands of people who walks the route instead of running, I have a suggestion. Take your smartphone, download the Spokane Historical Smartphone app, and turn your water breaks into learning opportunities. Better yet, abandon the race and just explore the history of Spokane. Here is some of what you will discover:

Starting Line: You and your 40,000 friends are going to spend a while waiting for the race to begin, and fortunately Riverside is one of Spokane's more historic streets. Take a few minutes with Spokane Historical to learn about the Great Spokane Fire of 1889 and landmarks like the Davenport Hotel and the Great Western Building.

Mile 1: Still on Riverside Avenue, you are now skirting the edge of the historic Browne's Addition neighborhood. Look up at the MAC (the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture for you out-of-towners). Consider dropping out of the race in favor of a more genteel walking tour of Browne's Addition. Or stop at the Elk for a Bloody Mary. You don't have to run.

Mile 2: Having ignored my suggestion to drop out a mile back, you are now puffing up a hill above People's Park--which served as a special campground for hippies and the like during Expo 74. This was the only time that hippies were welcome in Spokane.

Mile 3: Now you are running past Greenwood Cemetery, a classic Victorian burial ground. Get off the rat race and explore this magical place with Spokane Historical. Learn about Spokane Garry, Spokane's Civil War Veterans, Mary Latham, and the mysterious hidden tunnel.

Mile 4: To your left is Fort George Wright. This historic site was home to black soldiers, and a totem pole. In 1911 Teddy Roosevelt gave a speech here--listen to a recording.

Mile 5: As you huff up Doomsday Hill, look out to where Natatorium Park used to be. Don't you wish you were there now?

Mile 6: The West Central neighborhood is Spokane's poorest neighborhood, but also the site of some spectacular mansions such as the Glover House and the Richardson House.

Mile 7: It is never too late to quit! Check out the historic Spokane Courthouse. Or continue across the iconic Monroe Street Bridge. Learn what the falls meant to the Spokane Indians and read Sherman Alexie's wonder poem and art project That Place Where Ghosts of Salmon Jump.

Did you finish the race? Very well then--but spend some time walking around the downtown with Spokane Historical. We have over 250 Spokane stories online and on your smartphone!

Mullan Road Conference Next Weekend!

Dear Readers, I have been remiss in informing you about the upcoming Mullan Road Conference, which is this weekend in Spokane and Cheney.

Named after its builder Captain John Mullan, the road crossed the Continental Divide to connect the headwaters of navigation on the Missouri and Columbia Rivers. The wagon road was begun in 1859 and completed in 1862. In a very real sense, the Mullan Road completed the work begun by Lewis and Clark as they searched for a practical route to the Pacific Ocean.

Also much like Lewis and Clark, the Mullan Road is a bit overrated. The road only served for a few years before being closed by winter avalanches and washouts. Parts of the road continued to be used, right to this day, but long stretches are all but forgotten. Though the Mullan Road has a fascinating history it is hardly the equivalent of the Oregon Trail or other great western roads.

Still, the road attracts continuing interest from a mixed community of academics and history buffs. Each year we get together at a site along the road to share our research, look at pictures of ruts, see the local historical sites, and on Sunday to explore a section of the road--when it can be located at all. This year the conference will be held at the MAC, where we will break our sessions with a tour of the excellent David Douglas exhibit. And on Sunday we will explore the trail from the Snake River to the Idaho line.

Registration is a bargain at $60, or $20 without the meals! Come join us.

At the NCPH Conference in Ottawa

I am at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the National Council on Public History. Unlike the last few years, I am not going to try and blog the experience. I am learning so much here--about interesting digital projects, about teaching public history, and about interesting partnerships. Some of it will show up in this blog later on.

I also participated in two sessions, a Working Group about best practices for universities wanting to create a public history program, and to present about using mobile apps in a public history program with the example of Spokane Historical. Both were were interesting sessions and packed. The Working Group is a new experience for me, we will work with the NCPH leadership to produce a "best practices" document, a sort of how-to guide for departments interesting in creating a public history program. 

Was Grandpa a Scab?

Note: Are you a westerner with ancestors from Missouri? The following guest post from Jarod Roll of the University of Sussex might explain your family tree. Roll was a student of mine back in the day at Missouri Southern State University in Joplin, where he developed an interest in the labor history of the region. The following post comes from his current research on the use of strike breakers in the mining west.

1900 advertisement in Miners Magazine, 

the publication of the Western Federation 

of Miners.  From the Clarence Darrow
Digital Collection.

 Mine owners in Idaho’s Coeur d’Alene district ran a remarkable classified ad in local newspapers in June 1899. They needed 1,000 miners to work in their silver and lead mines. What job creators, you might think! But these were not new jobs. In May the mine owners, with the help of the state government and federal soldiers, had imprisoned most of the men who had previously dug the district’s metals in the infamous bullpen. In April the Coeur d’Alene locals of the Western Federation of Miners had gone on strike for union recognition and higher wages in the Bunker Hill & Sullivan mine in Wardner. While what happened is disputed, an April 29 union rally ended with the destruction of the Bunker Hill & Sullivan mill by dynamiters. The authorities quickly lowered the boom on the union. Governor Frank Steunenberg declared martial law, President William McKinley dispatched federal soldiers, all known union members and suspected radicals were detained without charge, and the military authorities instituted a permit system that effectively blacklisted foreign-born and union miners from working in the Coeur d’Alene. Such effective union-busting created a problem, however. Who would work in the mines? Help wanted!

What made the ad so remarkable was not the circumstances that necessitated it, but that the mine owners placed it in local newspapers in Joplin, Missouri, over 1,500 miles away. Why go so far, why Joplin? Located in Jasper County near Missouri’s border with Kansas and Oklahoma, Joplin was the heart of one of the nation’s leading metal mining districts. In the 1890s the district led the nation in zinc production and ranked third in lead. Joplin miners were good miners, used to working in hard ground, and did not belong to a union. This combination had led mine owners in Leadville, Colorado, to Joplin to find strikebreakers to cross WFM picket lines in 1896. It worked. In early 1897, mine owners in Ouray, Colorado, came to Joplin for strikebreakers. It worked again. By 1899, if you needed good, non-union miners willing to take on the
WFM, Joplin was the place to go. Joplin’s miners were the best strikebreakers money could hire.

In 1899 some miners went so far as to dynamite the

works of this Kellogg mine. Joplin strikebreakers

entered a volatile environment.

Hundreds of Joplin miners took the offer of employment in Idaho. By late summer, their work had brought most of the mines back into production. Their labor not only reinforced the owners’ heavy-handed union-busting strategy but also encouraged them to permanently replace the foreign-born miners of the WFM with native-born, non-union men. What had been a majority immigrant workforce in 1898 was two-thirds native-born American in 1901. The Joplin miners also benefited  Strikebreaking paid good wages! Many of the Joplin miners stayed on in Idaho. In 1904, for example, the owners’ employment agency reported that over 300 Missourians worked in the mines at Burke and Wallace, over 26% of the workforce. Some of the Joplin men went back to Missouri. Albert Torr, for example, used his earnings from strikebreaking to buy an interest in a Joplin mine. Others continued strikebreaking. In 1903, over 100 Joplin miners left Idaho to take strikebreaking work in Cripple Creek, Colorado.

Joplin strikebreakers left a poisoned legacy. Union miners rightly despised them. In Colorado, union miners coined a new phrase to describe the seeming ignorance and servility of Joplin strikebreakers: “I am from Joplin, you’ll have to show me.” Joplin miners would do anything their employers asked, the story went, but they were so ignorant that they had to be given careful instruction, to be shown. “Show me” began life as a term of opprobrium. In Idaho, “Joplin” and “Missourian” became synonyms for “scab,” or “cut-rate laborer.” Coeur d’Alene union miners even wrote a song, “Strike Breaker’s Lament,” that imagined the last words of dying Missouri strikebreaker:

I wish I was in Joplin, in Joplin down in Mo. . . .
Just then his voice it faltered, he ceased to murmur low,
His soul it went a-scooting to Joplin, Joplin, Mo.
His partner wept above him, and sadly fell his tears,
Then tried to drown his sorrow by drinking many beers;
He boxed the stiff and shipped him, as fast as he could go,
To the land of scabbing miners in Joplin, Joplin, Mo.

The mine owners got their 1,000 miners from Joplin in the end. Many of them stayed in Idaho. If you live there, look at your family tree. Do you have any ancestors from Missouri? If so, there is a good chance that they were scabs.

Jarod Roll teaches American History at the University of Sussex in Brighton, England. He is the author of Spirit of Rebellion: Labor and Religion in the New Cotton South and coauthor of The Gospel of the Working Class: Labor’s Southern Prophets in New Deal America. He earned his BA at Missouri Southern State University in Joplin, Joplin Mo.

Spokane Ghost Signs Update



Surely not *that* Henry George?

Today ended the second week of History 407: Research Methods in Local History. What a great day we had! The course met at the old Schade Brewery building in the West Central neighborhood, near Riverpoint campus. We explored the lobby and the historic photograhs there, then headed over to the Jensen Byrd. Students worked in teams of two, one with a clipboard and the other with a camera to record the signs the we found. Then the teams fanned out and explored the neighborhood.

Afterwards we had some beers at Ugly Betties and talked about what we had found and how to improve our data collection. Some of the observations:

• An amazing number of legible signs still exist, and they are cool as hell
• There are also many traces of signs that are no longer readable--we will look for historic photos to try and figure out what they said
• Photographing the signs is tricky, some are up high and at angles where they are not visible directly below, other are obscured by power lines and the like
• Signs for hotels and tobacco produces predominated with about five of each
• Working in teams is definitely the right way to proceed, not only so one can take pictures and the other notes but also to help one another deciper faded lettering
• We cannot wait to get into the archives and begine researching the stories behind the signs, which we will find in city directories, property record cards, register nominations, and more

Below is a slideshow of some pictures I took. The first half are from a few weeks ago when I was scouting for this class, today's photographs begin with the Schade brewery.

 

Discounted Student Rate at Revitalize WA Conference

This announcement just in--looks like a great conference, and I am so pleased to see a heavily-discounted student rate. 

The Washington Trust for Historic Preservation will hold its annual RevitalizeWA conference in Vancouver, Washington, May 15-17, 2013.  This year, the Washington Trust is offering a discounted rate of $75.00 for student registration down from the $155.00 basic conference registration. 

The RevitalizeWA 2013 conference will feature a variety of engaging educational sessions, workshops and tours related to preserving and rehabilitating Washington’s historic places and revitalizing Washington’s historic downtowns all geared toward inspiring and informing attendees.  Topics to be covered include: preservation of historic theaters, heritage tourism trails, retail market analysis for Main Streets, tools for effective preservation advocacy, using federal rehabilitation and low income tax credits to redevelop historic buildings, improving your financial reporting system to rethink your non-profit, creating engaging tours of Midcentury Modern commercial buildings in your downtown, modeling best practices and collaboration in preserving Seattle’s Trinity Parish Church, using CDBG grants for storefront improvements, how to engage youth and diverse audiences in preservation and revitalization, successful adaptive reuse of industrial and large commercial sites, and what’s next for Main Street?  Keynote speaker, Charles Marohn, Executive Director of Strong Towns, will introduce a new model for community growth and sustainable development.

The Washington Trust will welcome preservation, heritage, and Main Street professionals, board members, volunteers, small business owners, city and regional planners, elected officials, design and building trade professionals, community and economic development specialists, educators, students, and local community members.  Not only is this a great educational opportunity but a chance to network with others from across the state.  More information about the conference, including a preliminary schedule, can be found on our website at http://preservewa.org/RevitalizeWA.aspx.

In order to take advantage of this offer, simply visit the Eventbrite online registration at http://revitalizewa2013.eventbrite.com/ and select the “Student Conference Registration” ticket type.  Be sure to list your college or university as the “Company / Organization” under the “Work Information” section.  For further information, contact Cathy Wickwire at cwickwire@preservewa.org.

Giving a Talk Wednesday Night

On Wednesday, April 3 at 6 p.m. I will be at the Spokane Valley library to talk about digital approaches to telling local history stories, with a focus on Spokane Historical. Find out what Bert from Sesame Street and Osama Bin Laden have in common!

Inlander Video on the History of Liberty Park

The Inlander is our local alternative weekly, and lately they have been producing local history videos. Below is the latest installment, featuring recent EWU public history grad Tracy Rebstock. Last year Rebstock researched the history of Spokane's parks for a series of stops for Spokane Historical. It is nice to see her hard-earned expertise in the subject being recognized in this video:

Google Don't Give a Shit. Maybe it Should

An update on my attempts to get Google to take down PhD in History, a Google-hosted blog that consists entirely of posts stolen from other history blogs, including this one. I filled out a form from here pointing to one of the purloined posts, the Ground Coulee dam one, and asked that the whole blog be removed. Instead Google deleted only that one post.

"Yes we host your copyrighted material. So?"

I went back and forth with Google, or an autobot at Google. I asked again that the whole blog be removed, they replied I needed to fill out a new form for each copied post. I pointed out again that the whole blog was copied and that filling out a 4-5 page form for each post was hardly practical. They replied again that I had to fill our a separate form and initiate a new request for each stolen post, and they are not going to do diddly until I do. And please remember that "we do not accept add-on requests."

I gave some thought to actually setting aside a few hours and filing a take down request for every stolen post. But what is the point? Clearly the blog PhD in History (and no I am not linking) is produced by some sort of software program. Others will follow, if they don't exist already. If I spend the time to get PhD in History, or at least all of its posts, taken down, a new blog will pop up in a day or two with the same stolen content. And Google will remind me that "we do not accept add-on requests."

In the end, this is Google's problem, not mine. If they want Blogger to become the platform of choice for a new kind of theft, who am I to criticize?

Also--despite the ink I am spilling here I don't really care all that much. This is a pretty obscure piece of theft and does me no real damage. Google and me--we don't give a shit.