Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 181

December 31, 2019: 2019 in Review: “Old Town Road”

[2019—it’s been real, it’s been good, but it ain’t been real good. Actually, I’m not even sure I’d say it’s been good, but it has definitely been eventful. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of major 2019 stories I haven’t been able to cover on the blog, leading up to a few predictions for what’s likely to be an even more eventful 2020.]On three contexts for one of the year’s (and music history’s) most surprising smash hits.1)      Black Cowboys: Yes, that’s the title of an underrated Springsteen songfrom his Devils and Dust album, but for once I’m not (mostly) talking here about Bruce. Instead, I’m talking about an even more under-remembered group of historical figures, the African American cowboys who constituted a striking percentage of that labor force(one in four!) yet remain nearly invisible in our collective myths and narratives. The wonderful, equal parts historical and mythic autobiography Life and Adventures of Nat Love (1907) offers one compelling way in to engaging with this largely forgotten American community. But so, in its 21stcentury way, does Lis Nas X’s “Old Town Road.” As much as the song is part of an evolving country music tradition (on which more in a moment), it is even more directly part of cowboy culture, right down to the stereotypical “Wranglers” about which I wrote in this post. A playlist that, yes, could start with an evocative pairing of “Road” with Springsteen’s “Black Cowboys.”2)      Cross-Cultural Country: “Road” was already a hit before Billboard temporarily banned it from the country music charts for “not embracing enough elements of today’s country music,” but that controversial (and eventually rescinded) move certainly helped take the song to a new level of attention and popularity (and seems to have led to the remix featuring Billy Ray Cyrus that really sent the song into the stratosphere). I agree with takes that Billboard’s move was at least frustratingly discriminatory (if not outright racist), not least because many other crossover hits, such as last year’s Bebe Rexha and Florida Georgia Line track “Meant to Be,” have had no such challenges. But the decision was also historically misinformed, both to the long legacy of African American country artists and to the related and even more overarching reality that country music has always been an amalgam of many genres, sounds, styles, and cultural forms. For all those reasons, “Road” belongs not just on the country charts, but in the country pantheon.3)      Out Artists: While the song’s success was a huge surprise, I think it might have been an even bigger twist (at least for those of us not initially familiar with Lil Nas X’s album or career beyond the song, which I have to believe was most of us) when Lil Nas X came out publicly as gay on the last day of Pride Month. We have of course come a long way from the days (only a few decades back) when an artist like Freddie Mercury had to keep his sexual orientation secret in order to avoid backlash (if not blacklisting), but I would argue that genres like country and rap (the two that Lil Nas X combines so potently in “Road”) continue to suffer from homophobia (although of course there are other openly gay artists in both those genres). In any case, for Lil Nas X to come out at precisely the height of his song’s popularity was a striking and bold choice, and one that added another vital context to the ground-breaking success of “Old Town Road.”Next 2019 review tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? 2019 stories you’d highlight?

December 30, 2019: 2019 in Review: The UAW Strike

[2019—it’s been real, it’s been good, but it ain’t been real good. Actually, I’m not even sure I’d say it’s been good, but it has definitely been eventful. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of major 2019 stories I haven’t been able to cover on the blog, leading up to a few predictions for what’s likely to be an even more eventful 2020.]I promise that I’m not gonna use every post in this series (or any other, in fact) to simply share pieces from my bimonthly Considering History column for the Saturday Evening Post. But in this case, I did write there about why the national strike started by UAW workers was so significant and so representative of the true radicalism of the American labor movement; since I didn’t get a chance to write about that strike in this space, I wanted to share that piece as a way to remember that vital 2019 action and activism. If you get a chance to check it out, I’d love to hear your thoughts (there, here, wherever!).Next 2019 review tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? 2019 stories you’d highlight?

December 28-29, 2019: December 2019 Recap

[A Recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying.]December 2: AmendmentStudying: “Summertime Blues” and the 26th Amendment: For the anniversary of the 13th Amendment’s ratification, a series kicks off with how a classic song connects to a generation-changing amendment.December 3: AmendmentStudying: Santa Clara County and the 14th Amendment: The series continues with the offhand sentences through which the Court revised an amendment and the nation’s ideas.December 4: AmendmentStudying: The 19th Amendment and the ERA: How the long road to the suffrage amendment might parallel a current political journey, as the series rolls on.December 5: AmendmentStudying: Washington, DC and the 23rd Amendment: How the 1961 amendment echoes the capital city’s complex history, and how it helped shift it.December 6: AmendmentStudying: On Not Taking the 13th Amendment for Granted: On the anniversary of its ratification, why we shouldn’t take the imperfect but inspiring 13th Amendment for granted.December 7-8: Future Constitutional Amendments?: The series concludes with three ways that the Constitution might (and to my mind should) be amended in coming years.December 9: 50s Musical Icons: Cross-Cultural Origins: A series on 50s rock and popular music kicks off with the cross-cultural origin points for those genres.December 10: 50s Musical Icons: Fats Domino: On the anniversary of his recording “The Fat Man,” the series continues with a few iconic moments in Fats Domino’s legendary career.December 11: 50s Musical Icons: Patti Page: Three signatures songs from the 50s top-charting female musical artist, as the series rocks on.December 12: 50s Musical Icons: Sinatra and Elvis: The differences between influential and interesting, and why even the former can be problematic.December 13: 50s Musical Icons: “American Pie”: The series concludes with the straightforward and subtler sides to a eulogy for 50s music.December 14-15: Crowd-sourced Musical Icons: My latest crowd-sourced post—add your thoughts on 50s music in the comments, please!December 16: Book Talk Recaps: Temple Graduate English Program: A series recapping some of my sabbatical book talks kicks off with three awesome audience cohorts from my return to Temple.December 17: Book Talk Recaps: Two Public Scholarly Conversations: The series continues with inspiring takeaways from two communal events at which I was fortunate enough to share my ideas.December 18: Book Talk Recaps: Student Responses at Four NY Colleges: Exemplary student voices from my whirlwind tour of four NY colleges, as the series rolls on.December 19: Book Talk Recaps: Scuppernong Books: Three great elements, two expected and one delightfully surprising, from my most recent bookstore talk.December 20: Book Talk Recaps: The Boston Athenaeum: The series concludes with three reasons why my last book talk of 2019 was a perfect way to end (for now!).December 21-22: What’s Next for We the People: Three ways I’m excited to extend the book talks and work into the new year, all of which could use your input!December 23: Wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves: Remember William Apess: My annual holiday series kicks off with two reasons to better remember a fiery Native American preacher.December 24: Wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves: Remember Yuri Kochiyama: The series continues with a few reasons to better remember the Japanese American activist.December 25: Wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves: Remember Dorothy Day: Why we should better remember the reformer who embodies the true meaning of Christmas, as the series rolls on.December 26: Wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves: Remember Gloria Anzaldúa: What better remember the challenging autoethnographer reveals about American community and identity.December 27: Wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves: Remember Abraham Cahan: The series concludes with the advice a prolific journalist and author might offer us all.Year in Review series starts Monday,BenPS. Topics you’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to contribute? Lemme know!

December 27, 2019: Wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves: Remember Abraham Cahan

[For this year’s installment in my annual series of holiday wishes for those mischievous AmericanStudies Elves, I’ll be expressing wishes for figures from American history whom we should better remember. Share your nominees in comments and happy holidays!]On the important advice a prolific author, journalist, and activist might offer us all.Once again, I’ve written a good bit previously in this space about the Russian Jewish immigrant editor and journalist, creative writer, and socialist and labor activist Abraham Cahan, and so wanted to use this first paragraph to highlight those posts so you can check them out if you’re able. Welcome back! Clearly Cahan left his mark on American literature, culture, and society in numerous ways, but one of the most longstanding and likely influential (if its influences were more personal and so somewhat difficult to quantify) was with his “Bintel Brief” column. Written for the Jewish Daily Forward (Forverts), the Yiddish-language newspaper Cahan founded and edited for many years, the “Brief” featured letters from readers asking for advice, as well as Cahan’s thoughtful and wise responses to those letters and requests. The questions spanned a huge range of topics, from those more specific to Jewish and/or immigrant American communities to more universal subjects (such as parenting and romance). What did not change, however, was the depth and quality of Cahan’s responses—while his overall career featured many more stages and sides than is the case for more dedicated advice columnists like the sisters Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren, I would nonetheless put Cahan right alongside them as a model of this difficult skill of public advice-giving.So if Cahan were still doling out great advice in this early 21st century moment, what might he have to say about our collective situation and struggles? (To be clear, Elves, my main wish is that we better remember and read his work, so that we can take his multi-layered lessons as directly as possible. But I’m gonna attempt to speak for him for a moment here nonetheless.) To my mind, one of his main emphases would be that we still desperately need more self-reflection on and analyses of our national narratives and myths. As I wrote in this post, Cahan’s masterpiece, the 1917 novel The Rise of David Levinsky , provides such reflections and analyses for narratives like “rags to riches,” the “self-made man,” and the American Dream; that it does so not through direct authorial commentary but rather through the complex, contradictory psychology and emotions of its title character and first-person narrator, only strengthens its modeling of those skills of reflection and analysis. Moreover, David’s status as a first-generation Russian Jewish immigrant also allows for reflection and analysis (from his audience as much as from him) of other national myths, including those that emphasize “Anglo,” “Christian,” or other homogeneous origins of American identity. All subjects on which much more reflection is needed here in late 2019.December Recap this weekend,BenPS. Figures (or stories, histories, texts, etc.) you wish we’d better remember?

December 26, 2019: Wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves: Remember Gloria Anzaldúa

[For this year’s installment in my annual series of holiday wishes for those mischievous AmericanStudies Elves, I’ll be expressing wishes for figures from American history whom we should better remember. Share your nominees in comments and happy holidays!]On what a stunning autoethnographer reveals about the US and us.As with earlier subjects in this week’s series, I’ve written about Mexican American writer, scholar, and activist Gloria Anzaldúaand her amazing book Borderlands/La Frontera in multiple prior posts, and wanted to dedicate this first paragraph to highlighting them in case you’re able to check them out (the first hyperlink above is the most in depth of those posts, just FYI).Welcome back! One of the best reasons to better remember and read Anzaldúa is just how fully both her book and her perspective challenge not just exclusionary definitions of American identity, but really any narrative that seeks to define America as something homogeneous. While it might seem that the “borderlands” of her title refers to the particular region in which she grew up (the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, located as fully in between the United States and Mexico as any place can be), or even the Mexican-American border overall, my argument (which I advanced in both a chapter in my second book, Redefining American Identity , and part of the Mexican American chapter in my newest one We the People ) is that Anzaldúa helps us see the entire United States as a borderlands. She does so through one of the most multi-layered texts I’ve ever read, a book that utilizes literatures and languages, history and culture, religion and myth, autobiography and communal stories, and more to create this profound new vision of the nation, one all Americans should at least consider.Anzaldúa’s subtitle is The New Mestiza, and I would say something parallel about this figure/identity—that while she might seem to be referring to particular individuals or a specific form of heritage, her argument instead is that in the late 20th century all of us are in a number of important ways “mixed.” Given just how much our collective conversations seemed unable to grapple with Barack Obama’s multi-racial heritage and identity—and I’m thinking here not just of the Birtherism and racism on the right, but the much more general and often celebratory tendency to define him as “the first black president”—I would argue that we very much still need strategies for engaging with the concept of “mixed” identities. And again, while of course particular individuals (with our 44thpresident and, yes, my two sons as examples) seem to literally embody that complex combinatory heritage, Anzaldúa makes a persuasive case for this mestiza form of identity as not just widely shared, but indeed the defining experience of late 20th century humans. Here in the early 21stcentury, Elves, we could all benefit from better remembering and reading that challenging and crucial perspective.Last wish tomorrow,BenPS. Figures (or stories, histories, texts, etc.) you wish we’d better remember?

December 25, 2019: Wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves: Remember Dorothy Day

[For this year’s installment in my annual series of holiday wishes for those mischievous AmericanStudies Elves, I’ll be expressing wishes for figures from American history whom we should better remember. Share your nominees in comments and happy holidays!]On the inspiring activist who defines the best of what Christianity has meant in America.
At the height of the mid-19thcentury debates over slavery in the United States, some of the most vocal partisans on both sides (and just to be very clear, I’m not trying by any means to equate the two sides in a “fair and balanced” sort of way, simply to highlight a shared rhetorical device) appealed directly to Christianity, and even more directly to particular passages in the Bible, in order to make their case. William Lloyd Garrison, Henry Ward Beecher, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, three of the most prominent and central voices in the abolitionist movement, all credited Presbyterian minister John Rankin and his Scriptural opposition to slavery with greatly influencing their views on and work for that cause. On the other side, Richard Furman, the President of the South Carolina Baptist Convention, argued that “the right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example”; future President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis went even further, thundering that slavery “was established by decree of Almighty God,” and “is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation.” There’s plenty that can be said about the issue of religion and slavery in America, but my point here is a more simple one: the Bible can be, and most definitely has been, used to justify any social or political position, even the most diametrically opposed ones.
On virtually every relevant issue, then, the question of “What Would Jesus Do?” is generally short-hand for “What Would I Like Some Irrefutable Backing For In Order to Feel Better About Doing Myself” (not an acronym that would work as well on bumper stickers, of course)? But if there’s one social issue for which the use of Jesus’s and Christian philosophies would seem, to my mind, most appropriate and as close to genuinely irrefutable as we’re likely to get, it’s poverty. As cited in the Gospels of both Matthew and Luke, Jesus answered a question from his disciples about how to achieve perfection by replying, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor [“give alms” is the King James translation, but same difference], and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” Leaving aside whether such actions are truly possible—or the even more complex question of what would then happen to those who have sold all they have, given to the poor, and thus become impoverished themselves—the larger message of this advice, as of a great many of Christ’s pronouncements, is that an individual’s and a community’s spirituality and perfection are directly connected to, even dependent on, their willingness to take care of the least fortunate among them. And by that measure, no American life and legacy are more truly Christian than those of Dorothy Day (1897-1980).
Day was by her teens in the 1910s and remained for most of her life thereafter a self-proclaimed and proud socialist and Christian anarchist, and so by her final decades, with the Cold War having pushed socialism and Christianity into explicitly opposed boxes, she was a hugely controversial and divisive figure. Her own (Christ-like, one might say) willingness to admit her weaknesses and shortcomings and mistakes, as when she wrote of her common-law marriage and abortion in the autobiographical novel The Eleventh Virgin (1924) or her spiritual struggles and doubts in the more overtly autobiographical The Long Loneliness (1952), no doubt contributed as well to those mixed responses. But Day’s most significant work and legacy, her 1933 founding (along with fellow activist Peter Maurin) of and lifelong commitment to the Catholic Worker movement, represents one of our nation’s most impressive and influential (in her own life and down to the our present moment) efforts on behalf of the most impoverished and marginalized Americans, and as such we cannot allow it to be overshadowed by those mixed responses. “Our rule,” Day wrote of the movement, “is the works of mercy,” and no figure or movement have better emblematized Shakespeare’s evocative idea (from The Merchant of Venice) that “the quality of mercy is not strained.” It is no coincidence that the movement was founded at the height of the Depression and began its efforts with a no-questions-asked soup kitchen in New York City—like Day herself, the movement has always taken the fight on poverty and hunger and injustice of all kinds into the heart of our most embattled communities, leaving the debates over theology or politics to be hashed out by those less busy helping their fellow Americans.
Religious faith is a profoundly personal matter, making it one of the AmericanStudies topics into which I tread most hesitantly. But as with any of the central elements of individual and communal identity, it has also been a hugely influential social factor throughout our history, making it impossible to analyze American lives and texts and culture without including it in our purview. And whatever we say about Day’s personal faith (and she had plenty to say herself about it, which would be the place to start), I feel very confident in saying that her social contributions to American life embody the best and most inspiring version of what Christianity can be and mean here. One of many reasons we should better remember her, Elves, on Christmas as on every day. Next wish tomorrow,BenPS. Figures (or stories, histories, texts, etc.) you wish we’d better remember?

December 24, 2019: Wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves: Remember Yuri Kochiyama

[For this year’s installment in my annual series of holiday wishes for those mischievous AmericanStudies Elves, I’ll be expressing wishes for figures from American history whom we should better remember. Share your nominees in comments and happy holidays!]On a few of the many reasons why we should better remember the influential activist.Again, I’ve written previously in this space about Yuri Kochiyama, and wanted to keep this first paragraph short so you can check those posts out if you would.Welcome back! Since I wrote those posts I researched Kochiyama more deeply in order to include her in the Japanese Internment chapter of We the People , and would now argue that she can help us better remember at least two important sides to the internment era. For one thing, she exemplifies multiple complex realities of the internment camps: not just their unconstitutional and horrific imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of Americans (a majority of them American citizens like the California-born Kochiyama), but also the stories of Japanese American soldiers who volunteered to serve while interned with their families (a roster that includes both Kochiyama’s twin brother Peterand her future husband Bill) and the complementary activism that took place within the camps. Kochiyama, for example, built on her college English degree to edit a newspaper at her Jerome, Arkansas camp, and within that newspaper published letters from and testimonials about Japanese American soldiers for her “Nisei in Khaki” column. Every interned individual deserves a place in our collective memories, but Kochiyama in particular illustrates those multi-layered histories quite strikingly.Her lifelong activism after the war, about which I did write more fully in those prior posts (and which was often undertaken in partnership Bill, particularly their shared advocacy for collective memory of and reparations for internment), likewise helps us better remember the lives and legacies of interned Japanese Americans. But Kochiyama’s activism extended far beyond Japanese American causes, and included extensive experience with the Civil Rights Movement (including a friendship with Malcolm X that culminated in her presence in a famous photograph [CW for graphic imagery] of the aftermath of his assassination) and her participation in the October 1977 takeover of the Statue of Liberty by Puerto Rican nationalists. Better remembering that lifelong activism thus helps us engage both with the interconnected nature of many 20th century social movements and with the complex but crucial concept of intersectionality, of how different identities and communities can pull together toward the common causes of equality and social justice. That’s a lesson we sorely still need, Elves.Next wish tomorrow,BenPS. Figures (or stories, histories, texts, etc.) you wish we’d better remember?

December 23, 2019: Wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves: Remember William Apess

[For this year’s installment in my annual series of holiday wishes for those mischievous AmericanStudies Elves, I’ll be expressing wishes for figures from American history whom we should better remember. Share your nominees in comments and happy holidays!]On two of the many reasons why we should better remember the fiery preacher.As with most of the figures I’ll highlight this week, I’ve written a number of prior posts on or featuring William Apess. So for each figure, I’ll dedicate the first paragraph to highlighting a few of those posts (and asking you to check them out if you would), so as not to repeat myself in this new one!Welcome back! Those prior posts certainly reflect many of the reasons why we should better remember Apess, which could be boiled down to: he was a genuinely unique badass who connects to equally badass Early Republic histories and communities. But better remembering Apess would also help Americans challenge a narrative that remains frustratingly influential in 2019: the “vanishing American” narrative that positions Native Americans as part of our history rather than part of our present. You might think that prominent 21stcentury indigenous communities like the Standing Rock protesters would make it impossible not to recognize Native Americans as part of our contemporary society, but to my mind our national narratives continue to leave out Native Americans far more often than they include them. Few American voices have ever challenged that frustratingly persistent trend more potently and successfully than William Apess did.As I wrote in this post, Apess also offers one of our clearest and most impressive models of a subject I’ve been thinking a lot about in recent years and will continue to in my next book project: critical patriotism. Without spoiling everything I’ll try to trace and argue in that project, I would note that our collective narratives likewise remain consistently, frustratingly bad (just ask Colin Kaepernick if ye doubt the claim) at challenging the assumption that patriotism and criticism are two different ways to engage with the nation. One way to change that trend is to better remember the many figures throughout our history who have exemplified a critically patriotic perspective, one summed up nicely by the final lines of Apess’ “An Indian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man”: “Do not get tired, ye noble-hearted—only think how many poor Indians want their wounds done up daily; the Lord will reward you, and pray you stop not till this tree of distinction shall be leveled to the earth, and the mantle of prejudice torn from every American heart—then shall peace pervade the Union.” May we better remember that lesson, and the voice who offered it, Elves!Next wish tomorrow,BenPS. Figures (or stories, histories, texts, etc.) you wish we’d better remember?

December 21-22, 2019: What’s Next for We the People

[Since I’ve been on sabbatical this Fall, in place of my usual semester recaps series I’ve spent the week recapping some of the many book talks I’ve gotten to deliver over the last few months. Leading up to this special weekend post on what’s next for We the People !]I’ve proposed my next book project, on competing visions of patriotism (celebratory vs. critical in particular) for the same wonderful Rowman & Littlefield American Ways series that published We the People. But I very much hope to carry We the People with me into 2020 as well. Here are a few of the ways I plan to do so:1)      More Talks: I’ve already got a handful of book talks scheduled for 2020, including spaces I’ve had the chance to talk before (like the Gardner Museum) and ones I’m excited to add to the list (like the Massachusetts Historical Society). As we move closer to the 2020 election, it feels clear to me that the book’s histories and stories, ideas and questions will only become more relevant to our conversations, debates, and choices. So as I’ve said many times before, but will keep repeating, I am open to the possibility of any talk, in any type of setting, and anywhere in the country (and I generally try to travel at my own expense if possible, and at the very least would say that money or budget should never keep anyone from raising an idea!). Please let me know if you have ideas or contacts for other talks!2)      Podcasts: Talking in person is far from the only way to share a book in the 21st century, of course, and I’m actively seeking podcastsas one exciting alternative space for those conversations. It looks definite that I’ll be able to chat with Ali Noorani on his wonderful “, and I’ll share more details about that here as I get them. I’m also hopeful that I’ll be able to chat with Keri Leigh Merritt for her amazing “Merritocracy” podcast/YouTube channel, and ditto. But I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t yet know the podcast landscape nearly as well as I should, and so I’d really love ideas and suggestions for other podcasts (or YouTube channels, or web conversations and communities of other types) for which this book might be a good fit.3)      Other Opportunities: Two of the more exciting opportunities on We the People’s horizon both came at me in unexpected and unique ways. A Twitter colleague recommended me for the King’s College Constitution Day lecture, and I’m very excited that I’ll get to talk about exclusion, inclusion, and the Constitution there in September 2020. As I mentioned in Friday’s post, at my Boston Athenaeum talk I might Alison Bassett from the Trustees of Reservations, and it looks like I’ll be able to collaborate with them on their year-long project focused on definitions of American identity. Both of those opportunities reflect a couple things, I’d say: the ways in which this book extends to many different conversations, communities, and corners of American society; and the need to keep an open mind about finding and connecting with those possibilities. I certainly plan to do so, but would also ask y’all, if you’d be so kind, to keep We the People in mind for events, programs, projects, or opportunities that you might know or learn about. Thanks in advance!Holiday series starts Monday,BenPS. Ideas for other places I could talk or write about We the People? Lemme know, and thanks!

December 20, 2019: Book Talk Recaps: The Boston Athenaeum

[Since I’ve been on sabbatical this Fall, in place of my usual semester recaps series I’ll be recapping some of the many book talks I’ve gotten to deliver over the last few months. Leading up to a special weekend post on what’s next for We the People !]On three reasons why my last book talk of 2019 was a perfect way to end (for now!).1)      Beauty: If giving a talk in a space like this didn’t feel particularly special, I’d be doing something very wrong. Obviously the content and significance of my talks don’t change based on where I’m delivering them, and I’ve never given one where I felt uncomfortable (although the one bookstore, many years ago, where they literally just had a mic in the middle of the store and expected me to step up and start talking with no introduction of any kind was a bit daunting!). But for the sabbatical’s and year’s culminating talk in particular, to be in such a stunning place helped me take a step back and think about the whole series so far, and I’ll always be grateful to have had that moment in this beautiful place (and for the help and support of all the Athenaeum folks, especially Elsa Vernon and Brian the A/V guy).2)      History: The Athenaeum is much more than just a beautiful place, of course—it’s also one of Boston’s most historic spaces, and one of America’s oldest enduring libraries. I felt the presence of that history in many ways, including in the great Required Reading: Reimagining a Colonial Library exhibition (which runs through March and I highly recommend). But by far the most inspiring such historical echo was an entirely unexpected one—I was able to prepare for the talk in a small room adjoining the lecture hall, and that room’s spacious windows looked out directly into the Granary Burying Ground, home to (among other historic landmarks) an obelisk that honors Benjamin Franklin’s parents and a memorial to the Boston Massacre victims (one of whom, Crispus Attucks, I discuss briefly in my talk). A symbolic reminder not just that we are surrounded by our histories, but that we have to keep them in better view if we’re to move forward into any kind of meaningful future. 3)      Today: While sharing some of those histories has been my central goal for my book talks (as it was for We the People itself), it will come as no surprise that many of the conversations at and after those talks have focused (as my book’s Conclusion does) on our 2019 moment. At times (including this one) those conversations have felt more like group therapy sessions, and I don’t mean that in a dismissive or negative way at all—god knows we can all use spaces and opportunities for that. But in both the Q&A and at the book signing table, the contemporary conversations at this talk also included more practical and productive ideas about work we can all do going forward, both individually and collectively. And along those lines, it was great to see at the talk folks from organizations that are doing that work, such as Laura Tavaresfrom Facing History and Ourselves and Alison Bassettfrom The Trustees of Reservations (who are, she told me, planning a 2020 series on defining American identity, for more on which watch this space!). Solidarity is a key element of the work, and I felt it in many ways at the Athenaeum. Special post this weekend,BenPS. Ideas for other places I could talk or write about We the People? Lemme know, and thanks!